The Carver
by Spectral Scribe
Summary: Something is carving people up like jack-o-lanterns. When the boys take a case on Halloween, Dean revisits high school from a new perspective, Sam explores his hatred of the holiday, and they both learn that the past is haunting everyone.
1. Chapter 1

**THE CARVER**

A/N: _Takes place Halloween of season 3, so… I'm going to take liberties and say Bedtime Stories was early October, from the comment about the pumpkin, and this comes between that and the ever popular Red Sky at Morning._

Disclaimer: _I do not own or lay claim to anything related to Supernatural._

Summary: _Something is carving people up like jack-o-lanterns. When the boys take a case on Halloween, Dean revisits high school from a new perspective, Sam explores his hatred of the holiday, and they both learn that the past is haunting everyone._

* * *

"Have you seen Brian?"

The cluster of teenagers sprawled on the floor against the wall shook their heads, flapping their scripts with a shrug, and went back to discussing weekend plans.

Audrey felt her frustration tick up a notch, and she balled her hands into fists, digging the nails into her palms and relishing the sting until her temper evened out to a tolerable degree. She was going to kill him. The undeserving slacker. Stupid golden-boy who landed the role of Banquo without even batting an eye, couldn't care less about the theater department, couldn't care less about anything but his own inflated ego. And Mr. Lindaugh would totally let him skip out on rehearsal because he was probably going to end up winning an Oscar someday.

There was another group reading lines at the other end of the room. Audrey strode up to them and repeated her question.

Myron briefly looked up from his script. "I heard him say he was going to the bathroom, but that was, like, two hours ago."

"Not helpful," Audrey spat. "But thanks."

Marching to the doorway of the room, she flung it open and stormed into the hallway, trying to control her breathing. She was going to kill Brian. She really was.

In the auditorium, the three witches were working a scene onstage, Mr. Lindaugh standing on the floor observing. Audrey strode briskly up to him and announced without preamble, "I can't find him."

"What?" Mr. Lindaugh snapped, head twisting in her direction. "We need him for the banquet scene."

"I know," Audrey replied slowly, forcing herself not to shout. "But he's not here. He must have gone home."

Mr. Lindaugh shook his head. "Okay. We'll just finish up this scene and that'll be it for today. Tell everyone else they can leave."

Nodding, Audrey flashed a fake grin before walking away and rolling her eyes. Like hell she was going to tell everyone. She wasn't Mr. Lindaugh's messenger girl, much as he wanted her to be. They could figure it out for themselves. Snatching her backpack from the auditorium chair where she'd left it, she threw it over her shoulder and hurried into the hallway.

It was late. Much as Audrey loved acting, she hated the unbelievably long days it required her to put in at school. Eight hours of class straight into three or four hours of play rehearsal. The hall was quiet and empty. Deserted. Half the overhead lights were shut off, and only darkness and the occasional glow of moonlight drifted in through the windows, making the hallway look dim and shut-up like a tomb.

Her quick footsteps echoed on the floor. It was eerie, the change that took place in the school after hours. During the day it was bright, packed with students, and loud. At night it was dark, silent, and sinister. She didn't like it. But at the same time, she was parked in the student lot, which was all the way at the opposite end of the school from the theater wing.

She passed a line of gray lockers. An old trophy case. A girl's bathroom.

As she neared the boy's bathroom, the sound of running water met her ears: the only sound aside from her own lonely footfalls. She slowed her pace, coming up to the doorway. The water ran evenly, endlessly. But there was no other sound.

"Hello?" she called into the open doorway, caught between wanting to crane her neck around the corner of the entrance to see into the bathroom and wanting to keep walking. It sounded as if there was no one in there. Just a faucet that had been left on, running a continuous stream of water into the sink and down the drain. "Brian?" she called wryly, voice echoing off the walls of the bathroom. "You taking a two-hour piss to avoid memorizing your lines?"

There was no answer. The bathroom was empty.

Audrey looked back over her shoulder, gazing down one end of the long, dark hall, and then the other. The windows behind her revealed nothing about the black night.

At last she sighed angrily, annoyed with herself, and muttered, "So lazy you can't even turn off a faucet, now, can you? Unbelievable." Shaking her head, she marched confidently into the bathroom, found the sink that had been left on, and twisted the handle. The rush of water sputtered to a stop, dousing the room in silence. It dripped a couple of times, plunking softly in the sink, and then it stopped. Audrey was about to leave when the sound met her ears again, a quiet, unassuming _plink!_ But the sink had stopped dripping. It was not coming from the faucet.

It came again, like a tiny drop of liquid falling into a bowl of water. _Plink!_ Like a leaky ceiling during a rainstorm dripping into the buckets set out to catch the drops.

_Plink!_ Audrey eyed the three other sinks to her left. None of them was leaking, and moreover, none of them was filled with water, which would have been necessary to create this particular sound.

_Plink!_ It was coming from behind her.

She did not look up at the mirror, which would reveal the four stalls behind the four sinks. She kept her eyes on the white basin, the rusted silver faucet.

_Plink!_ An overwhelming and inexplicable sense of dread welled warmly in her stomach.

Slowly, Audrey steeled herself and turned around, prepared to mentally berate herself for her foolishness when it was revealed that there was some sort of leak in the ceiling, in a pipe, _somewhere_, that was dripping.

But instead her breath caught in her throat, lungs on fire, heart clenched in a tight fist, body shocked with the electrical current of adrenaline as her eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

In the open stall, leaning against the side, legs splayed out on the floor, was Brian. His body was slumped forward over the toilet, one arm stretched across the seat, head tilted to the side over the basin and facing outward.

_Plink!_

His eyes were gone. In their place someone had carved triangles into his skin and scooped out the flesh, leaving a mangled mess of red behind.

_Plink!_

His nose had been cut off, leaving the bloody outline of an upside-down triangle.

_Plink!_

His lips had been cut away, leaving jagged flaps of skin, the cuts extending the corners of his mouth well out into his cheeks, curving up in an insane grin. His crimson stained teeth stood out under exposed gums. Blood dribbled from the wounds, red rivers down his cheeks like tears, leaking from the corner of his enlarged mouth and down his chin. Drops fell in a steady rhythm into the toilet bowl, whose water was now dyed red.

Audrey couldn't breathe.

Brian stared at her through eyeless, triangle-shaped sockets.

She screamed.

* * *

Gray tombstones were scattered across the tall grass, jutting crookedly from the earth. They were inscribed with various sentiments, decorated with intricate designs, and sporting the weathered appearance of crumbling, age-worn stone. Sam stood before these tombstones, hands in his pockets, head bowed, intently reading the inscriptions with a furrowed brow. The wind blew dark hair in front of his eyes, and Sam shook his head to clear it away as he huffed out a humorless snort.

"Here lies the body of Christopher Blake," he read aloud, raising his voice and tilting his head so that the sound carried over his shoulder. "He stepped on the gas instead of the brake." Turning away from the Styrofoam gravestone, Sam glanced up at Dean, who was sitting at a picnic table on the library lawn, newspaper splayed out on the table in front of him, pen stuck horizontally between his teeth. He chuckled around the pen. "It's not funny," Sam pointed out petulantly. "People die in car accidents all the time."

Plucking the pen out of his mouth and tapping it against the tabletop, Dean replied without looking up, "But their deaths aren't described in rhyme."

Sam rolled his eyes and turned back to the fake tombstones. "Okay, how about this one? Here lies Lester Moore; Four slugs from a .44; No Les No More." Dean wasn't laughing behind him, but Sam couldn't tell if that was because he was too engrossed in the newspaper to pay attention, deliberately ignoring Sam, or simply grinning in amusement. "Or the one next to it: RIP Barry M. Deep." Again no response. "Well, I mean, you kind of have to… see how that's ones spelled… to get the joke I guess… not that it's funny, because it's not…"

Once again turning away from the Halloween decorations littering the library lawn, Sam looked over at Dean, who was now hunched over his paper, eyes focused, pen back in his mouth but dangling precariously out the side of his slack lips. A sinking sensation formed in the pit of Sam's stomach. "Found something?" he asked, trudging to the table.

"Sixteen-year-old boy mutilated and murdered at school," Dean explained, pen slipping out of his mouth and landing on the table. Frowning, he snatched it up and replaced the cap. "Found in the bathroom by another student during a late play rehearsal. He was, uh," Dean grinned darkly, eyes flicking up to Sam, "carved up like a jack-o-lantern."

Sam couldn't rein in the exasperated sigh that escaped his lips. "So? I mean, that sucks, but, a pumpkin-themed killer two weeks before Halloween? Not that surprising."

Dean shrugged. "They're sayin' it's some kinda copycat killer from some murders that happened way back when it used to be a little schoolhouse over a hundred years ago. Same thing back then. Bunch of school kids had their faces sliced and diced into porch decorations. I mean, it _could_ be a copycat killer, but what these local yokels don't realize is that—"

"—it could be the original killer," Sam cut him off, finishing the thought with grudging agreement. He gave another dry snort. "Seriously. I was all in favor of holing up for a few weeks with a bucket of popcorn and motel cable, but no. You said we needed a case. Two weeks before Halloween."

"And?" Dean challenged, folding up the newspaper and raising his eyebrows belligerently at Sam.

"_And_," Sam sniped, "it's _Halloween_. When all the freaks come out to play. If it's not ghosts going overboard in celebration of their favorite holiday, it's idiot people who try to trick others into thinking their haunted house is the real deal. It's like running through a house of mirrors for us. Way too complicated. For all we know, this could be some kind of, of Halloween prank gone awry," Sam stammered indignantly, gesturing towards the folded newspaper on the picnic table. "October only makes our job harder because it's harder to spot the real thing. Remember that Halloween when we were kids, and we thought there was that coven of witches killing animals, but we ended up freaking out a bunch of old ladies at a costume party who were discussing the coyote that was running around maiming their dogs? Or, or that time we thought there were zombies in that cemetery in Nevada, and it turned out to be a group of, of teenage vandals daring each other to dig up a grave?"

Sam paused, catching his breath after the rant, feeling hot and annoyed despite the cold bite of the October wind. Dean continued to stare at him with that same vaguely challenging look. "You done?"

Having nothing else to say, Sam shrugged.

"Good, 'cause this is right in the next town over, it'll take us maybe an hour to get there. And on our way, you can explain to me what it is you have against Halloween." Dean planted his hands on his knees and stood up, grabbing the newspaper and brushing past Sam on his way to the parking lot.

Sam sighed again, glancing at the row of Styrofoam and cardboard tombstones.

_Here lies Clyde  
Whose life was full  
Until he tried  
To milk a bull._

Stuffing his chilled hands back into the pockets of his windbreaker, Sam hurried off after Dean, angry and annoyed and frustrated.

_Halloween_. He shook his head. He hated Halloween.

* * *

After checking into the motel, which, in an apparent fit of desired fanciness, had decorated the entire room with lace, the Winchesters headed for Fair Hill High School. It was a Friday afternoon at 2:30, which meant that the students were all still trapped inside the building. Like a prison. Dean bet the windows didn't even open. High school architects were just that evil, probably in cahoots with the sadistic principles and power-tripping teachers. After four years of transferring around, Dean had come to the conclusion that all high schools were the same.

He turned the key in the ignition, cutting the engine as well as the Black Sabbath that was blaring from the speakers. He and Sam both cocked their heads to the left, peering out Sam's window at the tall, gray building. Yep, sure looked like a prison to Dean. Actually, Dean had been to prison, too, and he thought that might even be a bit better than high school. At least in prison you didn't have to pretend to pay attention and you got free meals.

"Paper wouldn't give the name of the kid who found him. We've gotta find some way of getting in there and talkin' to the students without looking like a couple of freakin' pedophiles," Dean murmured, eyes locked on the intimidating three-story building.

"I've got an idea." Sam's face was turned away, still gazing meditatively out the window. "Leave me here. Go research the history of this place—the first murders. I'll call you when I need you to pick me up."

Sam was already halfway out his now-open door when Dean called out, "What are you gonna do?"

"Try to find a way in." Sam stood, looking around to see if anyone was watching them. "Which we might not even need if you find the right information." He raised his eyebrows at Dean before he slammed the door shut.

Shaking his head, Dean watched him walk off to a bench and sit down, pulling out the newspaper he'd grabbed and opening it so that it concealed him entirely. "Research," Dean spat disgustedly as he turned the car back on and a guitar solo screamed in his ears. He spun the wheel, gunned the gas, and peeled out of the parking lot. "Go do research, Dean. Go sit in a library for five hours. Go stick a pencil through your eye. Sure, Sam, I'll do _all_ the work," he grumbled as he cranked up the volume of the speakers and cut around a slow-moving Volvo that honked its horn obnoxiously at him.

He had to drive around for a while to get his bearings, get a layout of the town, and find the nearest library. No Halloween decorations at this one. Boring. Dean got out of the car and walked inside, hoping that the town records would not be bore-you-to-tears dull like all other town records were.

He had a feeling they would be and looked forward to reading about some hacked-up bodies.

* * *

Darkness had fallen. The sky was overcast, dark gray clouds drifting sluggishly through the night. Sam rubbed his hands together in the evening chill and pulled fruitlessly on the door handle; the door, predictably, did not budge. It was locked.

He continued his trek around the school, peering through the windows, trying the doors, looking for signs of life within. Once the final bell had rung, Sam had watched all the students emerge from the building, trying to spot unusual behavior, trying to hear snatches of conversation that might be about the murder. He'd gotten nothing, had been unable to get into the building around the swarms of students, and had settled for waiting anyway. Now the doors were all locked, he was still out here, and no one appeared to be coming out.

Dumb idea. Sam was just pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket to call Dean and tell him to come pick him up when a door about ten yards in front of him swung open. A tall, dark-haired man with an beer belly emerged, clad in a gray uniform and dirty white sneakers. As Sam walked swiftly forward, he heard the distinct jingle of keys in the man's pocket.

They were at the edge of the parking lot when Sam caught up to the man and came up beside him, grabbing his attention by pulling out a twenty-dollar bill.

"How would you like to keep making your paycheck, plus a little extra, without having to do a single thing next week?" Sam offered, holding up the bill in front of the man's face.

The custodian narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?" he asked in a husky baritone.

"Your uniform, your keys, and for you to take a nice, well-deserved vacation," Sam said simply.

The man frowned at him. "Just 'cause I clean a school for a living, doesn't mean I'm stupid. I could get fired."

"Or you could go to the racetrack and multiply this by ten." Sam pulled out a second twenty, smoothed the two bills out, placed one on top of the other, and tucked them into the man's coat pocket.

The custodian's frown curled up into a grin. "I got an extra change of clothes in my car."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: _Thanks for the reviews! I'm glad you like it so far, irismay; as a constant reader, I always look for your input. Onto part 2!_

* * *

The uniform was tossed over a wicker chair by the table, the ring of keys sitting next to a Styrofoam cup filled with steaming black coffee. Dean picked up the cup and took a sip, wincing at the assault on his taste buds when the liquid practically scalded him on the way down.

"Three years of Stanford education, and all along my baby brother was aspiring to be a janitor. I'm so proud," he announced with a grin.

"Custodian is more politically correct, actually," Sam murmured absentmindedly, still going through the notes Dean had taken the afternoon before as his vanilla latte cooled on the table. "And do you have a better plan? This will get me into the school. I can check for EMF, look into the bathroom the kid was found in—"

"Okay, thank you, I get it, Sam," Dean cut him off, cautiously testing his coffee again and finding it still piping hot against his tongue, which was now stinging and tingly. "And you can also sthcrub the toilets, mop up sthpilled lunch, and wash the blackboardsth," Dean lisped around his burnt tongue.

Sam scrunched up his nose. "Why are you talking like that?"

"The ladiesth find if theckthee." He waggled his tongue at Sam before pulling it back into his mouth. "So what am I supposed to do? Sit here and twiddle my thumbs?"

"_You_ should keep researching," Sam replied with an eye-roll. "I can't believe this is all you found," he added with a glance at the notes, frowning over the scribbled phrases. "This town's records suck. So it was the teacher that did it?"

Dean nodded as he pulled the chair away from the table, turned it around, and sat down with his knees on either side of the back, arms draped across the top and chin resting on his forearms. 

"Yup. In 1889 Miss Carver—no real name—just showed up to school one day with a knife, went to town on the entire class, and then mysteriously vanished."

"Then how do they know it was her?"

Dean snatched his notes out of Sam's hand, scanned the meager contents, and dropped them back on the table. "I didn't write it down, but some farmer who lived by the schoolhouse said he saw her go in and then, couple of hours later, come out and disappear around the corner. No one else went in, came out, or was found dead except the kids. Which begs the question," Dean continued, eyebrows furrowing, eyes troubled. "Why does Sam hate Halloween?"

Not dignifying the out-of-the-blue question with an answer, Sam picked up his latte and took a sip. Dean took this opportunity to continue.

"I mean, for all it's a pain in the ass for our job, it does have its perks. It's the one day a year when girls can shamelessly dress up like slutty cats, slutty witches, and slutty nurses without—what?" He cut himself off when Sam's knee jerked and hit the bottom of the table, nearly upending Dean's coffee, which he caught just before it could topple over.

"What? Nothing," Sam snapped hastily, taking an extra long sip from his drink.

"For nothing it sure seemed like a whole lotta something. You got somethin' against nurses?" Dean asked.

A wistful, nostalgic smile ghosted over Sam's face like a whisper. "No. It's stupid. It's just… Jess… dressed up like a nurse that Halloween. The night you came to Stanford."

Dean wasn't sure what to say. Sam hadn't brought Jess up in a while; he seemed to have moved on from her death. But occasionally something would remind him of her. Dean could tell by the way it jarred him at first and then sent him into a quiet, contemplative mood.

Sam chuckled and shook his head, taking another sip of his latte. "So how are we going to find out Miss Carver's real name if none of the records even seem to know what it was?"

"Better question," Dean cut in. "How are we going to find her body?"

"Brian McDermott's funeral is tomorrow," Sam piped up, rising from his seat and striding over to the motel window. Pulling back the curtain, he gazed out, eyes locked on their stunning view of the parking lot. "One of us can go scope out his friends and family, the other can check out the old graves."

Dean silently watched Sam as he looked out the window, one hand still wrapped around the curtain, the other drumming lightly on the wall next to the glass. He looked as though he was expecting something to happen out there. Dean had seen that look before. When Sam was ten years old.

* * *

_Even though Dean was fourteen, he knew better than to think that there was nothing to fear on a dark, moonless night. The fact that his dad had left the day before, gun over his shoulder and machete clutched in his fist, as well as the fact that it was currently October 31, both factored into Dean's anxiety as dusk settled thickly over the world outside their little house._

_Sam had been standing at the window for fifteen minutes, one hand tightly clutching the ratty brown curtain hanging limply on the side, the other tapping the wall as he lightly rolled his fingers against the wood. His face was blank; his eyes were cast on the darkening street outside._

_Dean kept glancing over at his brother's back, finding himself distracted from the fuzzy picture on the old TV. At long last, unnerved and irritated by Sam's incessant tapping, he snapped, "What's wrong?"_

_Sam didn't turn around. "There's monsters outside."_

_A jolt went through Dean's body, daring him to flinch, but he held still—not that Sam would have seen it anyway, as the boy was still facing the big window. Dean's instinctive reaction to hearing those words was to grab the sawed-off he kept in the drawer by his bed, shove Sam away from the window, and shoot. But rationality got the better of him, and he realized that Sam wasn't seeing monsters at all._

"_Those are kids, dumbass. It's Halloween."_

"_What if they're not all kids? What if there's a monster pretending to be a trick-or-treater? What if they're not all costumes?" Sam asked worriedly, though his face, as Dean leaned around to see it, gave nothing away._

"_Trust me, they're kids. Monsters don't wander around outside with bags of candy."_

"_How do you know?"_

_Dean opened his mouth, shut it, thought, and opened it again. "Because I'm smart."_

"_So are monsters. They know how to get in people's houses."_

_Giving an exasperated, and not altogether untroubled sigh, Dean stood up and walked over to the low window where Sam stood. He bent down a little so that his head was even with his little brother's and squinted out the window into the burgeoning dark._

_Lifting a finger, he tapped against the glass, pointing out one of the costumed children in a small cluster that was passing by. "See that?"_

_Sam was hesitant. "Yeah."_

"_Vampire, right?" Dean said innocently, eyeing the boy's black cape._

_Sam nodded, watching the kid. "Yeah."_

"_Well, vampires don't exist."_

"_They don't?" Sam asked, sounding surprised, but still not tearing his eyes away from the window._

"_Nope," Dean replied, pointing out another kid. "And that one? Frankenstein? You of all people should know that Frankenstein's just a book. And a movie. All fake."_

_Sam's eyes widened as he watched the Frankenstein lookalike scamper past with a pillow-case full of sweets. "Really?"_

"_And look, there's a mummy," Dean nodded to a kid wrapped loosely in toilet paper. "Mummies only live in Egypt. There aren't any here."_

_At last Sam looked away from the window, gazing up at Dean with wide, hopeful brown eyes. "No monsters?"_

_One corner of Dean's lips curled up in a grin. "No monsters."_

_With that reassurance, Sam hopped over to the couch and flopped down, now paying attention to the old movie that was playing. Dean shook his head and turned back to the window, peering through the night as a gaggle of teenagers stalked past, laughing, clad in rubber masks and carrying bags of free candy. Trick-or-treating was a stupid tradition that normal kids did, and Dean hated normal kids. They were all idiots. Dean was glad he wasn't just some stupid kid partaking in the stupid tradition of dressing up and begging strangers for candy. He wanted no part of it._

_The teenagers were laughing and shoving one another playfully. They would probably sit around later watching scary movies and trading candy. Dean wasn't interested in any of it. But they sure looked like they were having fun._

_With a sigh, Dean turned away from the window._

* * *

Once again Sam found himself in front of a row of headstones, but this time at least they had respectful messages inscribed on the stone rather than cheap jokes painted on cardboard. Clad in the suit they kept around for just such occasions, he hung at the back of a large group, mostly unnoticed. But he did have to bend his knees a little to keep blending in, considering everyone around him was at least three inches shorter. Sometimes being tall really had its drawbacks.

As they lowered the casket into the grave, Sam glanced around at the teenagers standing together on the other side, wiping their faces and looking generally devastated. There was a pretty even amount of boys and girls, and they all looked like typical high school kids.

While he had on his sympathetic face, inside Sam was bored and annoyed; nobody was talking about how Brian had died, or anything that could be helpful to the case. It was a waste of time. He resented that this had happened so close to Halloween, and by proxy, he resented everything and everyone involved.

A brown-haired girl pulled out a tissue and violently blew her nose. A short blond boy was sniffing and looking for all the world that he was desperate to hold back his tears. A girl with dark red hair and prominent freckles was staring at the casket as it was lowered, eyes distant and unfocused, face blank. Sam didn't know who any of these people were, and frankly—though he called himself a people-person and thought he was certainly more social than Dean—he didn't care.

What he _did_ care about was that his brother was going to Hell in six months and acted as though he couldn't care less. Because here they were, on a regular case. Wasting time.

Speaking of his brother… Sam swept his eyes across the section of cemetery that he could see. He wondered how Dean was doing.

* * *

Dean felt like a blind kid trying to pick his favorite color. He didn't know what he was looking for. They didn't have a real name to go off of. They didn't even know if Miss Carver was buried or cremated. Likely buried, if it really was the old teacher haunting the school. But maybe not even here, in this graveyard.

Sweeping the EMF meter in a half-circle through the air, Dean listened carefully for any crackling, any sound, anything at all; he'd already gone past about thirty graves with it, dating back to the early 1800's, and had found jack squat.

The sky was gray, like the headstones. Everything was dull and colorless; fog would probably start rolling in soon, settling over the graves eerily. It was the perfect atmosphere for Halloween.

Dean dropped the EMF in his backpack and sighed. Nothing.

As soon as he rounded back to the other side of the cemetery and caught Sam's eye, they started back for the car, leaving the crowd of mourners behind.

"Anything?"

"Nothing."

They got in the car. Dean shook his head.

"I don't know, man. No EMF in this whole freakin' place. Either our murderous teacher isn't buried here, or it isn't her."

"What do you suggest it is?" Sam asked petulantly. "Know any monsters that like to carve up people's faces? Besides, it fits. Logistically, this is an easy case. Teacher kills students. Teacher's ghost comes back and kills more students in the exact same manner."

Pulling onto the street, Dean kept his eyes on the road, not needing to watch Sam's face or even listen to him, really, to know what he was thinking. "Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it isa copycat killer."

Sam was tugging on his suit collar, loosening his tie. "Then it's not our job. If I don't find anything at the school tomorrow… then we'll leave it up to the cops."

"I hate cops," Dean spat instinctively.

"The only people who hate cops are criminals, Dean."

Dean rolled his eyes. "And the only people who hate Halloween are—"

"—Hunters," Sam cut him off. He snorted humorlessly and shook his head. "Maybe it _is _a copycat killer. I mean, people _do_ kill each other. That's not our job. Plus, it's Halloween. Maybe we're jumping at shadows."

Dean puffed up his cheeks and then blew the air out in a slow whoosh. "It fits so perfectly, though. I mean, man, if we had this bitch's name and burial location, this case would be a snap." He chuckled. "Just once I'd like an easy case." They drove for a few minutes in silence. Dean wondered briefly what cassette was in the tape deck. "Anyway, tomorrow you get to play dress-up and see what's what at school. And don't forget to leave those toilets clean and shiny, Mr. Janitor."

"Custodian," Sam mumbled.

* * *

There was an "Out of Order" sign on the closed bathroom door in the main hallway. This was it.

Throwing a cautionary look around him to see if anyone was in the hall, Sam pushed open the door and stepped inside, pulling the EMF meter out of his deep pocket where it had previously been bulging under the dark gray fabric. The outfit was not a good fit—the stomach sagged where the swell of a beer belly usually was, and the pants were about two inches too short—but it wasn't so noticeable that anyone would wonder if he really worked there. It had actually been fairly simple to get into the school undetected, considering there had recently been a murder within the building's walls.

The bathroom looked… well, like a bathroom. There was nothing special about the row of dirty sinks, the urinals, the big mirror, or the stalls behind.

Walking further into the room, Sam swept the meter slowly through the air, catching an angry whine from the device as he swung it closer to the stalls. Following the electric sound, Sam moved closer, coming up to the open door of the first stall. The EMF meter screeched at him. Inside the stall was exactly what one would expect to find: toilet, toilet paper dispenser, graffiti on the wall. But, edging in closer, Sam noticed that the bowl of the toilet was stained with a hint of red.

Bingo.

His mind produced the image of Brian bleeding into the toilet, the blood mixing with the water, Brian's eyes and nose gouged out and his mouth torn up into a jack-o-lantern grin.

The EMF continued to crackle tellingly. He flicked off the device and tucked it back into his overlarge pocket that also held the ring of keys. At the same time, the sound of rushing water blasted into the air, and Sam looked up to see that all four sinks had switched themselves on, shooting water into the drain, hissing with the force of it coming out. At once, in sync with the sinks, the toilets and urinals flushed, adding to the raucous rushing of water, which echoed off the tile walls, and Sam clapped his hands over his ears as the sound surrounded him. The stall doors started swinging on their hinges, slamming shut and popping back open as if caught in a fierce wind, and an invisible black marker started scribbling on the wall across from Sam in the same messy scrawl that made up the profane graffiti on the swinging stall doors.

I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS

I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS

I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS

Over and over the words were etched onto the tile wall, in large script, in small script, at the same time, too fast for one hand to be doing it all. Then, when most of the wall space was taken, the message changed and was written once in huge letters at Sam's eye-level so he would be sure to catch it.

ONLY BAD ONES

The toilets stopped flushing; the stall doors lost their momentum, screeching to an abrupt halt at various angles; the sinks shut themselves off, leaving the room in silence. Sam took a breath, trying to slow the hammering in his chest. It didn't matter how many times he dealt with this crap; if he was alone and unarmed when a ghost stopped by to make its presence known, his blood pressure went up a little. But this was just a warning. Effectively, Sam was being told to get out. Before he ended up like Brian.

Sam, however, would not give up that easily. And now that the ghost had apparently left to let him mull this over, it was just him and the mess all over the bathroom walls. And the stain on the toilet too; if Sam knew anything about cleaning, it was how to get bloodstains out of just about anything, from clothes to car upholstery. Turning around, he went to retrieve the cleaning supplies from his closet.

He hoped the marker on the walls was washable.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Thanks again for the reviews! Glad you guys are enjoying it. The next update might come just a tad slower because I'm going on vacation tomorrow, get back the 19th. I've got a couple pages of the next chapter written, but I'll dive right back into it when I get back next weekend._

* * *

It was a small, cozy restaurant with a diner-like feel, but it wasn't really a diner. Not like the cheap, crappy diners that Dean usually frequented, anyway. It had a nice, homey atmosphere, and even though it was a Monday at 1:00 pm, it wasn't completely empty. Taking a look around, Dean figured that the few people present were on a lunch break, had the day off, or didn't work a typical nine to five job. In any case, there were a few other patrons scattered about.

There was a sign that requested he seat himself, so, after picking out the guy who seemed most likely to welcome a friendly chat with a stranger, Dean sat down at a table across from that of another loner guy. He looked the part of a typical small-town Joe who waved at his neighbors and helped little old ladies across the street: late thirties, maybe early forties; sandy hair; a high, distinguished forehead; bright blue eyes covered by reading glasses. He was looking down at the newspaper stretched open on the table next to his plate, which contained a chicken salad sandwich and fries.

A waiter came by, and Dean ordered a burger. Then, alone again, he leaned closer to the man at the next table and said, "Excuse me. Sorry to bother you, but is that today's newspaper?"

The man smiled as he glanced up. "Yes, it is."

Dean nodded. "Any new information in there about that murder at the school?"

"No," the man sighed. "It doesn't look like anyone's gotten any closer to figuring out who did it."

Nodding some more, Dean fiddled with his napkin. "I've heard some… interesting things about that. I guess this has happened before? I mean, this kind of murder. I'm new in town, and well, my kid brother's a senior in high school, and I'm nervous about sending him off there without knowing anything about what's going on here."

"I understand," said the man. "And I wish I could help you out, but I'm afraid I don't know much about it either. I just moved here a few weeks ago. And while I don't have a younger brother, I am a substitute teacher, and I'd like to know more about this as well before I sub there. So I guess we're in the same boat."

_Damn._ Dean managed to hold onto his amiable smile even as he cursed at his luck for picking the one guy who was new to town and wouldn't know about the stories or the history. Great. Peachy-frickin'-keen. The waiter arrived with his burger.

"Although," the man continued after a few moments, folding up his newspaper and frowning thoughtfully. "My neighbor seems like a nice guy, and I know he's been living here his whole life. If it's true that this has happened before, then I would imagine he'd be a good person to ask about Fair Hill's history." He smiled. "If you're interested, I could take you over there once you're finished eating and we could talk to him."

Dean was almost taken aback by the man's frank helpfulness and smooth, articulate, friendly manner of speaking. "Sure, yeah. That'd be great."

Picking up his newspaper and plate, the man moved over to Dean's table and sat down, extending his hand to shake. "I'm Marty Robinson."

Dean shook his hand with a grin. "Paul Garfunkel."

* * *

On the whole, the plumbing freakout was the most exciting thing that happened that day. Sam walked around in his unflattering gray garb, checking around the school for EMF and wiping smudged windows when he saw them. When the bell rang between periods he felt trapped by the teeming hordes of students that moved, amoeba-like, down the hall, and he retreated to a wall or the custodian's closet to escape. When they were gone he moved easily again through the empty hallway, nodding at passing teachers who clearly couldn't care less who he was or why they hadn't seen him around before. He felt slightly indignant on Custodian Ron's behalf.

He tried to eavesdrop on some conversations of students as they drifted through the hall during passing period, but it was difficult when there were fifty different conversations going on at once, the hallway filling up with thunderous chatter. He caught a mention of Brian's name a few times, but the snatches of conversation he got weren't enough to give him any new information. He did learn that Emily Peters was now going out with Jimmy, that slut, and that Friday's geometry test raped someone in the ass, and that Tanya got so drunk on Saturday that she puked all over Francesca's new shoes, that bitch. But nothing about Brian's funeral, century old murders, or face-o-lanterns.

So now, getting towards the end of the day, having cleaned up what he could in the haunted bathroom and given up on hearing anything noteworthy in the petty conversations of the students, Sam was mopping up a spilled can of soda by the cafeteria, in front of the teacher's lounge. Dumping the mop back in the bucket of dirty water and ruing the moment he thought that pretending to be a custodian would be a piece of cake, Sam observed that the floor was now slick and shiny and obviously wet. Satisfied that it was now good and clean, he pulled the bucket on wheels back to the closet of supplies.

Behind him, some teachers were emerging from the lounge to get to their classrooms before the next passing period bell rang. Sam hadn't gotten far enough away yet to miss the squeak of a shoe on wet tile and then the thump of a person hitting the floor.

He tensed up and threw a glance over his shoulder, down the length of the hall. There were two younger female teachers hovering over an older woman with a shock of white hair lying on the floor clutching her right leg.

Sam darted down the next hallway on his left and was out of sight before anyone could look up.

* * *

The man had patchy gray hair, a gnarled face, keen green eyes, and a plain brown cane clutched in his right hand. He introduced himself as Eugene and led the two men into his living room before tottering on rickety legs and plopping onto a puffy armchair.

"There's beer in the fridge," he offered gruffly. Marty shook his head in polite refusal, but Dean stepped into the kitchen and grabbed two bottles of Miller High Life (figures), slapped one on the table in front of the old man, and cracked his open using his handy silver ring. "So what can I do for you boys?" Eugene asked after nodding his thanks to Dean and taking a swig of his beer. "You said you're interested in history. Guess I'm the man for that, then. I'm as good as history myself." He chuckled.

"Well, the recent murder at the school has both of us worried, and we heard this kind of thing has happened before, so we were wondering if you could tell us anything about it," Marty asked politely.

Eugene laughed. "I know I'm old, but I'm not quite _that_ old. The murders you're talking about happened in 1889, which would be…" He frowned and squinted one eye, thinking.

Marty piped up, "118."

"One hundred and eighteen years ago," Eugene finished with a nod. "That was still thirty-five years before I was born. But I guess I know the story as well as if I'd been alive back then. Most folks who've been around here long enough do." He frowned again, thinking. Despite Dean's desire to urge him on, he knew he had to be patient with the old man. Finally, he continued, "Fair Hill High used to be one room, one of those little old schoolhouses. I guess times were different then than they are now; no one knew the teacher real well, and the only time anyone ever saw her outside the school was at church, every Sunday.

"Miss Carver, they call her, but that's not her real name. No one seems to know what her real name was. Way the story goes, she went nuts one day and killed all her students—carved up their faces and hung them from the ceiling rafters. All those poor kids—all but one. There was one kid she left alive, out of the whole bunch. When the one kid went home the parents figured out something had happened at school, and they all went over there to find their children. But no one could find Miss Carver. She'd up and vanished.

"They tried asking the kid if he knew where she went, but the poor thing'd gone mute. He was only about ten, eleven, twelve or so, and was so traumatized by what he'd seen that he didn't speak a word after that until his death a couple years later in a tractor accident. No one ever found Miss Carver, but the parents all searched for her for days, looking for their revenge. Folks say she must have high-tailed it across the big field that used to surround the schoolhouse and out of town quicker'n you can blink to be gone by time the townspeople arrived."

Eugene took a break, gulping his beer. Intrigued by the new development of one of the kids surviving, and dismayed by the lack of knowledge as to what happened to Miss Carver, Dean asked, "Why did she let the kid live?"

Shrugging, Eugene balanced his beer in his lap and idly scratched his crotch through his gray trousers. Marty politely looked away. "People say it's because he was the only good student out of the whole class. Well—Miss Carver's definition of good, at least. Heard she was a real stickler for rules. Kid probably never spoke out of turn, went to church on Sundays, did all his work and always got good grades. She was a strict teacher, I guess. Decided to dispose of all her bad students. Went nuts, most people say."

"And nobody knows what her real name was?" Marty asked, brows furrowed, looking concerned for the retribution that was never paid.

Eugene shook his head. "Nope. Everyone's looked but come up with nothing. When she vanished, she took her identity with her. Of course, what most people don't realize is that aliens don't have regular names."

There was a stretch of silence filled only with the buzzing of a fly that kept swooping through the air by their heads. Dean stared at the man, positive he'd misheard him. "The what?"

"It's the best theory out there," Eugene explained as though it made perfect sense. "Miss Carver didn't run away through the field. She was beamed back up into her flying saucer and went back to her home planet. Human ears probably can't even comprehend her name in their language. Of course, they probably did tests on all the students, but the one kid who wasn't killed would have been traumatized after being probed by his alien teacher, which is why he never talked after that."

Dean and Marty stared at him. Dean, for one, was at a loss for words, and a sidelong glance at Marty told him that the other man was confused and somewhat alarmed by his friendly neighbor's apparent insanity.

"Right," Marty spoke up at last, nodding at them both. "Well. That certainly is a clever theory. I'm afraid I've got some errands to run, so I'm going to have to get going, if that's all right."

Eugene downed the rest of his beer. "Sure you don't want to hear about the UFO that landed in the woods ten years ago?"

Dean stood up hastily to follow Marty out the front door, finishing off his beer and nodding his thanks to the older man. They said goodbye and were out the door before Eugene could launch into more alien conspiracy theories. As they strolled to their respective cars, Dean shook his head, chuckled, and murmured, "What a nutjob."

"Sorry. I had no idea he had such a… colorful imagination," Marty offered with a smile. Then, pulling out a small pad of paper and a blue ballpoint pen, he scribbled something down, ripped off the sheet, and handed it to Dean. "It was nice meeting you, Paul. If you need anything else, give me a call. I hope you're not too put-off by all this to reconsider sending your brother to Fair Hill High School. But I should get going. Like I said: errands." He waved as he headed for his car. "Take care, Paul!"

Dean waved with a forced grin on his face, paper clutched in one hand. "…Right back atcha." As soon as Marty pulled away, he crumpled the paper in his hand and headed for the man's house. Marty Robinson was way too nice. Off-the-charts nice. It was impossible for a person to be that sincerely nice to a random stranger in a restaurant and not have some kind of agenda.

He picked the cheap front lock with ease and slipped inside the house with a quick glance around the quiet suburban street to make sure no one had seen. Late afternoon sunlight streamed in through the windows, lighting up the wood floor. The house was classily furnished, though clearly on a tight budget. Substitute teachers probably didn't make great money.

Sam had the EMF meter, but Dean had instinct. He crept slowly through the front hall, smelling for sulfur, looking for ectoplasm or a book on dark magic, searching for signs of foul play. It was always the unbelievably nice ones who had black hearts. Maybe this guy was summoning the evil teacher for his own nefarious purposes. The timeline fit, after all. Marty said he'd moved in a few weeks ago. Brian had been killed early last week.

It was half an hour before Dean started questioning his own logic. There was nothing in the house that would suggest that Marty was anything but a friendly, all-American brain. Which, of course, bugged the crap out of Dean. He did find a bottle of cherry vodka in the fridge and a small stash of dirty magazines under his bed, but other than that, the guy was squeaky clean.

He was about to call it quits when the phone rang. The answering machine picked up a few rings in, Marty's perky but dignified voice informing the caller to please leave a name and number so that he might return their call. Beep. Then—

"Hi, this is Linda from Fair Hill High School calling for Marty Robinson. One of our teachers broke her leg today, and we're going to need a substitute at least until the end of the week. If you're available, please call back at 732…"

Dean didn't listen to the rest of the number. Cogs were busy turning in his head.

A slow grin spread over his face, and he bolted down the stairs, replayed the message, and scribbled down the number before erasing it.

One ring. Two. Then a familiar female voice on the other end.

Dean cleared his throat and spoke with a good imitation of Marty's polite, eloquent enunciation: "Hi, sorry I couldn't get to the phone in time; this is Marty Robinson…"

* * *

All was quiet. Orange-gold late afternoon sunlight streamed in through the big windows that spanned the front hall, casting a reddish glow over the dull gray lockers. Sam's footsteps were lonely echoes against the tile floor, the cart of cleaning supplies he dragged behind him squeaking on its rusty wheels.

All the students were gone; had dashed out the doors at exactly 3:15, got into their cars (or their mothers' cars, which sat waiting in the parking lot), and careened away from the building as fast as they could, eager for the few hours of freedom before the following morning when they were required to return. Within fifteen minutes, everyone had vacated the premises. Even some of the teachers, who'd had no need to stay, had high-tailed it out of there as if they would catch some deadly virus by remaining within the building's walls for a moment longer than necessary. The only people left were Sam, a few straggling teachers, and the kids in the theater wing rehearsing for the upcoming play.

Nothing interesting had happened since the bathroom incident, and Sam was both thankful and disappointed for that. He hoped Dean had gotten some new information that would lead them to the teacher's body so they could salt and burn it and get the hell out of there. Before Halloween, preferably, but seeing as they'd gotten basically nowhere so far, and Halloween was the following Wednesday, Sam wondered how successfully they would accomplish this.

He was walking through the hall, mind going over past Halloweens that had ruined hunts and nearly gotten them killed, when he passed the bathrooms and glanced to the right down the very next hall. And stopped in his tracks.

There were four children hanging from the ceiling, colors washed out like an old fashioned photograph, nooses tight around their fragile necks, ropes vanishing up into the smooth ceiling and held by nothing. Two girls clad in simple white dresses and bonnets, two boys in trousers and high stockings, looking right out of the 1800's. Somewhere between the ages of ten and fourteen. Legs dangling high in the air, necks angled to one side, heads cocked, lifeless. Some swaying; some perfectly still. Death pallor in all their should-be-rosy cheeks.

Their eyes were gone. Mangled, bloody triangles marked the empty sockets and the space where their noses should have been. They grinned at him with bloody, torn flesh, manic smiles carved permanently into their faces, lips chopped away, dribbles of black blood oozing down their chins. They stared at him with empty, bloody, triangular sockets and grinned their demented, forced smiles.

Sam closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them.

The hall was empty.

His eyes cast about the hall for something else, darting from the bathroom to the empty hall to the next classroom. No other sign of spectral activity.

He released his breath slowly and started walking again, forcing his gait into a calm, relaxed stride. When he'd returned everything to his closet, he hurried to the exit and practically jogged to the parking lot and the lone black car waiting in the dusky evening. As soon as Sam hopped into the car, Dean's eyebrows furrowed and he gave him a look that clearly asked what had crawled up Sam's ass and died.

"Are we going?" Sam prodded impatiently, raising his hands briefly from his thighs. Dean shrugged, gunned the engine, and took off down the street.

It was a moment before Sam realized that Dean had dropped his curiosity about Sam's mood and was grinning impishly.

"Let me guess… hot girl gave you her number? No, then you'd already be gloating…" He stroked his chin in mock thought. "Gas station malfunction accidentally charged you four cents per gallon instead of four dollars? No, you're at a half tank. Oh, I know. You came across a traveling circus and signed me up as the Human Giant."

"No—but that would have been awesome," Dean cut himself off with a wistful smirk. "No, no. I found a way in."

Sam quirked an eyebrow at him as Dean glanced away from the road, grin growing.

"To the school," Dean added. "I ended up in this guy's house 'cause I thought he might be hiding something, and it turned out he's a substitute teacher. Anyway, his phone rang, and it was the school looking for a sub. Turns out some teacher fell and broke her leg today." Dean barked out a laugh. Sam's breath caught in his throat as he turned his face toward the window, hoping Dean didn't notice the panicked guilt in his features. "So, I pretended to be him and accepted the job. You start tomorrow, Teach."

"What?" Sam asked, snapping out of his mortification at having broken an old lady's leg with wet floor. "Dean, I can't pretend to be a sub. Half the school has already seen me as a custodian. Don't you think it'll look a little suspicious if I'm scrubbing toilets one day and giving a math lesson the next?"

"U.S. History, actually," Dean corrected. "And, so? This is way better. You can actually talk to the students, get a feel for what they know, what they've seen. Nobody talks to a janitor."

Sam let out a frustrated sigh. "Custod—forget it." He shook his head. "Anyway, it won't work. Even if I wasn't already there as a _custodian_—" he shot Dean an annoyed look "—I can't just go in there and pretend to be a sub. They'll want identification, they'll—"

"Dude, do you doubt my fake ID making skills? And besides. It worked in _School of Rock_," Dean argued.

"That's a movie, Dean."

There was a pause. Sam ran over possibilities in his head, wishing that he could drop the custodian job because subbing would be a way better gig, but then Dean spoke again.

"Fine. _I'll _do it, then."

Sam cast him a wary look. "Do what?"

Dean didn't answer. They were pulling into the parking lot of the motel.

"Dean!" Sam snapped. "You can't be a history teacher. You don't know anything about history." Dean got out of the car and started walking, ignoring him. Sam hastened after, shouting, "You probably slept through U.S. History and stole the notes from the class nerd! You can't, Dean. You'll blow your cover before you even get there! You've probably never cracked a textbook in your life. Are you listening to me? This is never going to work…"


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Wow, I really went on a writing spree today! 6 pages to finish the chapter! I'm glad I could get this one up so soon after I got back from vacation. I guess the writing muse was building up inspiration while I was away. Thank you soooo much for the lovely reviews; your words give me pleasure that only writers can understand, as I'm sure you know. And irismay, I'm so glad you loved the switch-up with their jobs; that was one of the main ideas that birthed this fic. And I'm also glad you liked UFO guy! He was so much fun to write. Anyway, I'm very excited to give you the next part, so I won't delay you any longer. Onto chapter 4!_

* * *

Dean shifted uncomfortably under his stiff sport coat and cleared his throat. Twenty-five pairs of eyes stared back at him: bored, expectant, daring, annoyed.

"Hi, class," he greeted, wincing inwardly at how lame he sounded. _Think Marty Robinson. _Be_ Marty Robinson. Here's to you, Marty Robinson… okay, focus._ "Since Mrs. H—" He stuttered, trying to remember the woman's name. "H-Hadley has broken her leg, I'm gonna be your sub for the rest of the week."

A gangly, dark-haired kid near the front spoke up, eyes glinting, a sneer on his face: "Is Mrs. H-H-Hadley going to be okay?" He mocked.

A few other students chuckled. Clearly substitute teachers had no respect.

Dean figured that could do with changing.

He walked up to the kid's desk, put his hands onto it, and leaned forward. "And you are?"

"Jimmy," the kid replied, raising his eyebrows challengingly.

"Okay, Jimmy. Your dad a military man?"

Jimmy replied with bored contempt, "No."

"Well, mine was," Dean replied, a smirk on his face and a glint in his eye, voice quiet and seemingly friendly with an undertone of menace. "And whenever I talked back, his punishment was for me to drop and give him twenty. So why don't you start with that and do another twenty each time you open that smart mouth of yours, okay?"

Jimmy stared at him warily but didn't move.

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Did I stutter?"

Throwing a nasty look at Dean's irony, Jimmy got down on his stomach and did twenty push-ups. While he was busy with that, Dean walked back to the front of the room and observed the students, who looked amused and gleeful at their classmate's comeuppance, as well as sharp and attentive for the new boss.

_That's respect._

"So, U.S. History, right?" A few students nodded. Dean sat down on top of the teacher's desk at the front of the room, rubbing his hands together. "What are you guys studying?"

A blonde girl piped up from the back, "The colonies."

Dean grinned. "Did you learn about the lost colony of Roanoke yet?" A few shook their heads. "Croatoan? No? Well, here's how it went down…"

For almost forty minutes, Dean proceeded to regale them with all the weird historical tales he'd ever heard: Roanoke, haunted Civil War battlegrounds, urban legends involving dead presidents, and the industrialist and inventor (and gunsmith) Samuel Colt.

The students were amazed by his unique knowledge. They sat rapt, listening to his stories and eagerly asking questions. Even Jimmy looked intrigued despite himself. Dean couldn't help the smile that kept stealing onto his face. And Sam had said he couldn't do it.

"Okay, now that I've told you all this cool stuff that I know, there's something I'm curious to hear from you guys."

The atmosphere in the room quickly changed from enthusiastic and interested to somber and subdued. They knew what he was talking about.

"I'm hearin' all sorts of things about this murder… and if I'm teaching here, I'd just like to get the facts straight," he continued cautiously, watching as a few students cast nervous glances to the back of the room.

"Please," one girl said quietly, gazing at him with wide brown eyes. She twisted her fingers anxiously, biting her lip. After a moment she found her voice again. "It's just… Audrey found him," she finished in almost a whisper, throwing a look to the back of the room. Dean followed everyone's eyes now to the girl in the back with dark red hair and a spatter of freckles dusting her face. She slumped in her chair in the back row, head down, eyes trained on her lap, ignoring everyone.

Jackpot.

"Right. Sorry," Dean offered, voice once again sounding lame in his own ears. "Well… that's all I've got today. No homework."

A few smiles broke across the students' faces at that news, but the mood had sufficiently been killed. _Nice going, Dean._

The bell rang, and by the time it was done, the entire class had vanished into the teeming hallway—all except for Audrey, who was still slinging her bag over her shoulder and eyeing Dean as she stood up. He approached her desk.

"Sorry for bringing all that up," he offered more sincerely.

Audrey raised her eyebrows, giving him an appraising look, and shrugged. "It's cool. Everyone's all freaked because they think if they mention Brian, I'll shatter like a piece of glass."

"You're… not bothered by what happened?" Dean asked slowly.

"Don't be ridiculous; of course I am," she retorted, rolling her eyes. She went quiet for a short moment. "I can't…" She shrugged one shoulder, glancing away. "I can't get it out of my head sometimes. His eyes were gouged out," she said slowly, dropping the full weight of it into the air between them. "But I also couldn't stand Brian. I know that's not a very nice thing to say about a dead guy, but I'm not going to cry over him."

Dean shook his head. "Still, though. It's gotta be rough, having to see something like that. And not know who did it, or if it'll happen again."

Audrey's eyes were cold and scornful. "Well, all the yahoos here think it's a ghost or something."

"What?"

"You know, with the stories." When it became clear to her that Dean didn't know, she added, "Everyone thinks Fair Hill High is haunted because of the schoolhouse murders. People say they've seen dead children strung up from the ceiling at night when everyone's gone home. And of course, everyone tells the freshman that if they don't behave, Miss Carver will come get them."

Dean quirked an eyebrow. "But you don't believe that?"

Audrey scoffed. "Of course not. It's just a story the upperclassmen tell to spook the freshmen. It's like a rite of passage. Besides, it's a ghost story. Nobody actually believes it."

Dean nodded. "Right. But it makes sense that people will be grasping at straws here. I mean, the killer left no clues. Unless you saw anything else in the bathroom the day you found Brian…?"

"Yeah," Audrey replied quietly, hesitant, eyes downcast. "There was something. A message written on the wall, in blood. It said 'aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?' Oh wait—wrong ghost story…"

The bell rang again, signaling the end of passing period.

"Damn it," Dean grumbled, looking down at his watch, realizing that he was supposed to be in another room this period. "I'm late for my next class."

Audrey shrugged. "Don't sweat it; so am I. But I can get away with so much crap these days, it's ridiculous. I'll just go splash some water on my eyes and pretend I was holed up in the bathroom for a while. Mr. Snyder will probably give me a pass on the pop quiz." She was already making her way to the door, and she swiveled her head over her shoulder as she entered the hallway, calling out, "See you tomorrow!"

Dean shook his head. Conniving little bitch.

* * *

As he walked down the hall with the EMF meter hidden under a rag and the headphones tucked inconspicuously into his ears, Sam wondered how Dean was faring with his students.

He snorted. Dean had _students_. Sam couldn't help but be amused by this thought.

The EMF whined. He was near the bathroom.

Yep, Dean was playing sub while Sam mopped floors. _That_ made sense. Sam figured if anyone should be playing teacher, it should be him. He was better suited to it. Dean would probably blow their cover by revealing that he actually knew less about U.S. History than he knew about car engines and proper gunmanship.

The EMF whined. Sam looked up, glancing around. He'd gotten the odd crackle here and there throughout the school, but the signal was strongest right around the bathroom in which Brian had been found. The thing practically went haywire at certain places: the boys bathroom, the hall just outside of it, and the next classroom over.

Which mean that Sam had figured out where on the premises that old schoolhouse had once resided.

The bell rang, and Sam pulled the headphones out of his ears and kept walking, trying to spot Dean somewhere among the throng of people. He really wanted to know how his brother was faring.

Because, really. Dean with students. Right.

* * *

Dean smacked Sam on the arm as he rounded a corner of the hallway.

"Dude, there you are. I've been lookin' for you all day."

It was almost four o'clock; the students had all dashed out of the building as if their tails had caught fire. Sam raised his eyebrows.

"Couldn't handle the kids?" he ventured, throwing a dirty rag over his shoulder and continuing in the direction of his closet. "Hmm, who could have predicted that?"

Dean grabbed the rag off Sam's shoulder and snapped it at him, the tip cracking sharply against Sam's elbow. "No, asshat. The kids were great, actually. From this perspective, high school doesn't look so bad."

"Because you have the power to make your students' lives miserable? That's probably why you hated teachers, Dean," Sam replied as he pulled open his closet, snatched the rag out of Dean's hand, and tossed it inside while fishing around the shelf for the EMF meter. "And besides, I thought you liked high school."

Dean's eyebrows shot so high Sam thought they were in danger of flying right off his face. "What would give you the idea that I ever enjoyed school?"

"Well, not so much the classroom aspect, but, you know. Lively social scene… I don't know, you always seemed to enjoy yourself." Sam shrugged as they started walking to the parking lot, fiddling with the gadget in his hand.

"I hated high school."

"Whatever. Anyway, EMF's through the roof by that bathroom. I'm figuring that's where the schoolhouse was. Of course, that doesn't really do us much good if we can't figure out where she's buried," Sam added, voice exasperated with the situation. "But I saw the kids—the ones she killed. They're still hanging around, too." He grimaced. "Literally."

Dean was grinning. "Put that on a Styrofoam headstone." He pulled open the car door and slid inside, swiping a hand down his face. "Some of the students think the school is haunted."

"It is."

"I know that, genius," Dean pointed out. He sighed. "Least they're on the right page. I mean, ghosts make more sense than aliens."

"What?"

"Never mind."

They drove in silence. Dean glanced out the window and watched the Halloween decorations slide by, sweeping away behind him as soon as he got a good look. There were fake spider-webs, scarecrows, jack-o-lanterns… One house had a stuffed zombie perched on the porch, a plastic severed leg in its lap like an afternoon snack.

Dean knew that Sam hated zombies. Not only had one broken his wrist last year in a footrace, but the possibility of their presence always wreaked havoc. Always. Especially around Halloween, when things were never as they seemed…

* * *

_Dean, being a hotheaded eighteen-year-old, was not adverse to punching his brother when he deserved it—which is exactly what he did when he'd had enough of his scoffing, eye-rolling, and snide under-the-breath remarks without ever looking away from his book._

_It was only a light punch, a warning. Sam rolled his shoulder after the impact, glowering darkly at Dean with sullenness that was rapidly becoming routine for the angry fourteen-year-old._

_"Dad thinks it's something."_

_Sam snorted into his book, holding it up over his face. "If he guns down a couple of kids begging for candy—"_

_Dean punched him again in the shoulder, and Sam dropped his book in his lap, rubbing the tender joint with his left hand. "Dad's not an idiot, Sam. There really is something here. Crops going bad, diseased livestock left and right, flickering lights. And, oh yeah, people have been seeing dead guys walkin' the streets at night."_

_"Sounds like Halloween to me."_

_"Yeah, well Dad doesn't think so. Could be demons inhabiting the dead. Or zombies. Anyway, we'll find out tonight."_

_Sam rolled his eyes. "We're in a crappy farming town. It's been dry lately, which can account for dead crops. People have been getting sick here, so there's something going around, and maybe it can infect the livestock, too. And the dead people are teenagers dressed up trying to scare little kids for Halloween. This entire holiday mocks us. Everyone thinks it's so much fun to pretend monsters are real for a day, but it would suck for them if they found out they are real."_

_Dean was taken aback by Sam's tirade, but the logic started poking at him like a sharp stick. "When did you become so cynical?" he muttered before walking away, turning over the signs of the supernatural they'd found here so far. It wasn't a stretch to attribute all those things to what Sam had said. So far the only one who had died was some old priest—maybe he'd just been old. Gotten sick. That's what everyone in town said it was._

_He heaved a frustrated sigh and gathered up a couple of guns in the duffel, wishing Sam didn't always have to make so much damn sense._

_Despite heated protests on Sam's part and some weak objections from Dean, John Winchester was resolute, and at eleven o'clock that evening they were creeping through the woods beyond the cemetery, where the dead people had been seen most often. Dean had worked himself up so much over Sam's argument that he found himself worried about what they would or wouldn't find, convinced that Sam was right and trick-or-treating brats were to blame for everything._

_Then they saw it: a gray-skinned corpse moving amongst the trees in the distance, half-hidden in the shadows and the low-hanging branches. John was a good ways off to the left; Sam was right by Dean's side, and as Dean raised his gun instinctively, Sam swatted it away._

_"Dude, what if that's someone in a costume?" he hissed angrily, and Dean faltered, casting a glance to their father, who was far enough away that he had neither seen the creature nor heard Sam speak._

_It_ did _kind of look like a kid with a lot of makeup on. The clothes looked as though they had once been nice—a suit or something—but were now in tatters and covered in dirt, and when moonlight shimmered through the bare branches, Dean could make out that it was a tall, young man._

_He lowered his gun._

_The figure turned and spotted them, stopping in his tracks._

_Then he was bounding in their direction, quick as a flash, faster than the lumbering zombies in typical horror flicks. A misty light flickered in the distance, off to the left, and a gun cracked and echoed off the trees, and the corpse was upon Dean, who got a whiff of its stale, rotting breath and saw the hollow sockets where its eyes had been and noticed the sallow, sunken cheeks and felt the ice cold of its dead, decaying flesh wrapping around his neck in a vice-like grip._

_Stars danced in front of Dean's vision as his head slammed against a jutting tree root, his back bouncing off hard dirt, and then the stars became black dots as the skeletal hands squeezed his windpipe shut. His gun clattered off somewhere, and he struggled unarmed against the strong creature until another gunshot cracked through the air and the corpse went slack and fell heavily on top of him, pure dead weight. He struggled for a few painful, rasping breaths before his vision swam back._

_Sam was standing on his right, horror etched in every line of his face; John was running towards them from the left, sawed-off still raised, fury clouding his features._

_"What the hell is the matter with you, Sam? Why didn't you do anything?" he shouted._

_Standing there with his gun hanging loosely by his knees, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, Sam looked all the gangly, shamefaced fourteen-year-old that he was. "I thought it was someone in a costume," he murmured in a low voice, sounding stricken. "For… for Halloween."_

_John tore his eyes away from Sam and looked down at Dean. "You all right?"_

_Dean nodded and shoved the heavy corpse off of him, rolling away from it, trying not to retch from the horrible stench of death that was still filling his nostrils. Slowly he got to his feet, grabbing his gun from the ground where it had fallen._

_He was going to ask what had happened when John interrupted with a brief explanation, "I saw the apparition over by me, sent it away with some salt. It was a Bhuta."_

_Realization dawned on Dean, and he felt like a fool for not having thought of that sooner. Bhutas were a type of evil spirit, referred to most often in Hinduism; it was a man who died a violent death, like all evil spirits, but who hadn't been given proper funerary rites. Which explained the death of the priest, if he'd been cutting corners._

_Dean went through the signs of a Bhuta in his head: appear as flickering lights; tend to haunt forests; cause bad crops, diseased livestock, illness, and insanity; and, most importantly, reanimate dead bodies at night. When John had sent the spirit away, its hold on the corpse that had been attacking Dean had been severed._

_"So all we've got to do is find the guy and give him a proper funeral?" Dean offered, rubbing his sore neck._

_John gave a curt nod, throwing another death glare in Sam's direction that told them both that he would be dealing with Sam's error in judgment after they finished off the Bhuta. "Come on."_

_Sam and Dean followed along in his wake, guns held loose at their sides, Sam's head down so that his bangs fell in front of his eyes._

_"I'm sorry," he murmured as they walked, side-by-side, through the forest._

_Dean shrugged._

_"I just—I really thought it was just someone in costume. Halloween screws everything up," he explained._

_Dean nodded. "I know."_

_John marched on in front of them, ignoring the quiet conversation._

_"That thing could have killed you," Sam whispered, more to himself, it seemed, than to Dean. He sounded aghast. Dean was already over it. Near-death experiences were expected in the life of a hunter, and aside from a little bruising that would surely crop up on his neck, he was fine now. Dad had their backs. But Sam still looked as if someone had slapped him in the face._

_"I hate Halloween," Sam grumbled, and Dean thought of laughing trick-or-treaters and little kids' excited faces when they got free candy and costumed partygoers, and he thought of Sam staring out the window at passing monsters and reanimated corpses that look like costumed teenagers, and he agreed._

* * *

Dean shook himself out of his thoughts as he walked down the emptying hall.

His three classes had gone well today; as he'd done yesterday, he told some stories and legends he knew, thrilling the students with accounts of gunfights in the Old West and his vast knowledge of historical serial killers, including H.H. Holmes' shenanigans during the 1893 World Fair at Chicago. The ones who'd read _The Devil in the White City_ had been eager to throw their knowledge into the pot on that one, and Dean had thought about where the sadistic bastard was now, stuck under a couple tons of concrete surrounded by a ring of salt, and smirked.

He hadn't spoken with Audrey at all today, but he figured he'd gotten everything out of her that was relevant, anyway. She'd come into his class, lowered her head, and stared at her desk for forty-five minutes, and as soon as the bell rang, she'd hopped out of her seat and fled. Some of the other students had hung back to chat for a minute or two before bolting to their next classes, wanting to comment on how interesting they found Dean's stories, which made him more pleased than he could articulate. Even Jimmy the Jerk had warmed up to him and stopped making bitchy comments.

It had been a good day. He hadn't gotten any more info on the crazy old broad that killed Brian, but at least he'd had good classes. Oddly, he liked teaching. He was enjoying high school, for the first time in his life. Ruthless teenagers weren't staring at him like an outsider; snobby girls weren't sneering at his ripped jeans and same three Salvation Army tee-shirts that he rotated during the week; geeks weren't shrinking away from him, afraid for some reason that he'd beat them up just because he could. The students were talking with him, and rather amiably at that.

_Finally_, he thought as he spotted Sam at the closet of cleaning supplies.

"Anything good?" he asked as he strode over, loosening the tie Sam had made him don for the day and further rolling up the already crumpled sleeves of his dress shirt.

Sam heaved a great sigh. "Other than the girl walking around with the lime green thong hanging out of her pants, nothing."

Dean glanced around the empty hallway for show, looking around to spot the elusive green thong. With a shrug, he turned back to Sam. "Well, so far we are just doing a bang-up job on this case."

"Tell me about it," Sam muttered, rolling his shoulders in his uncomfortably-fitting gray getup. "Let's get out of here."

They had just started their trek down the hallway when the lights flickered briefly, a quick electrical hiccup. Dean whirled around, feeling naked without a gun tucked in the back of his pants. At least he had his knife strapped to the inside of his ankle. There were no metal detectors at this school, which had made it easy to sneak the weapon in, but he would pay hell if anyone saw, so he left it where it was for now, somewhat comforted by the feel of it against his leg.

They didn't even have to turn on the EMF meter.

"You feel that?" Sam murmured, and Dean noticed the way the hair on his arms was standing, how static electricity seemed to be coursing through the air, buzzing in his ears.

"Yeah," he replied quietly, keeping a cautious eye around the empty hallway. "That is some powerful mojo."

"Keep your eyes peeled."

They made their way to the junction in the main hallway that shot off into a smaller one, right next to the dreaded boys bathroom; to save on electricity, the school had already shut down the lights in that hallway, darkness pouring through it with the faint gleam of afternoon sun shining in from the big windows of the main hallway. Lockers lined one side, classrooms on the other. Sam and Dean stepped into the hall, watching each other's backs, hackles raised on high alert, Dean's fingers itching to grab his knife.

Something flickered in the middle of the hallway, and for a fraction of an instant she was there.

The brief glimpse gave them a view of a woman in her forties, graying brown hair pulled into a bun, glasses perched on her pointed nose. Though the colors were washed out like an old photograph, it was clear that she was clad in a dull—perhaps brown—dress traditional to the late 1800s with a white collar and big buttons down the front. In one hand she held a book, and in the other a pointer that had once been used to indicate words written on a chalkboard and slap naughty children's knuckles.

But she flickered away in an instant, and that was all the detail Dean could acquire. In the next moment a new image flickered in the hallway, again for the briefest of moments, and Dean watched in horror as children appeared before him, hanging from nooses attached to the ceiling, heads cocked and limp, faces ravaged by a blade and oozing dark crimson blood from the places where their eyes, noses, and mouths had once been.

Then that image, too, was gone, and Miss Carver flickered back into focus, closer this time, jumping through the hallway whenever she was invisible. She was down the hallway, flickered out, then appeared at half that distance, vanished, then was amazingly ten feet in front of them.

Panic melted into the adrenaline that accompanied dangerous hunts, the kind of heat and strength thrumming through the body that Dean fed off, and in one swift movement he reached down and yanked his knife out from its hiding place, holding it up just as she appeared a foot in front of him with her pointer raised to slam it down on his head with a crack, and they both drove their weapons through the air at one another, and Dean's hand—knife clutched tight—sailed through emptiness, which whooshed down on him with the sound of a wooden stick being whipped through the thin air.

He glanced at Sam, breathing hard. An amused cackle echoed through the hallway, turning his feet cold. The adrenaline of the fight drained away, but Dean kept his guard up, heart still pumping heat through his body, eyes watchful for any kind of movement.

But she was gone, and with her, the hanging children. The hallway was empty.

"What the hell?" he wondered aloud.

Sam ignored him; his eyes were trained on the floor, and Dean followed his gaze to the book lying before him, the one Miss Carver had been holding. He reached down and picked it up, frowning at the cover.

"What is it?" Sam asked.

He flashed Sam a view of the cover. It was an old, brittle copy of the Bible, the cover brown leather worn with age. As he held it, a wind like the one that had come on him as he was swinging the knife ripped over the book in his hands, creaking open the cover and flipping yellowed paper until the book landed open on a page with underlined text, and the wind died down.

Dean read the underlined section of the proverb.

_For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.  
But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it._

He raised an eyebrow at Sam, who was reading it over his shoulder. Sam cast him an uneasy look, probably thinking of all the things about Dean that Miss Carver would find punishable by death. Dean returned his gaze to the ominous proverb.

It was a warning.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Yay! Thanks for the lovely reviews! I'm glad you guys are liking Dean as the teacher. I figure he'd be good at teaching--he probably taught Sam a lot growing up, just not the things you're 'supposed' to learn. ROBINV, I'm glad you find this scary and exciting; I was hoping to keep the scare factor up, as I do love the horror aspect of SN! Irismay, once again you catch onto exactly what I'm trying to convey with the characterizations. I like Sam as a person and character, but everyone has flaws, and I think he's just always grown up with the idea that he's the smart one and Dean isn't, so it grates on him to be mopping while Dean teaches. He just doesn't realize that Dean's smart in his own way. I'm also glad you like the inclusion of the flashbacks. There are some constant threads running through them, obviously, but I was hoping they wouldn't come across as too random because they're just snippets of past Halloweens. Anyway, sorry about the long note, here's chapter 5!_

* * *

Carrie dashed to the front of the room, beat Tim to the punch, slapped the teacher's desk, and cried out, "FDR and the New Deal!" Her face was lit up with expectant excitement, and Tim threw his head back in defeat.

Dean glanced surreptitiously at his notes before shouting, "Correct, for ten points! That brings the blue team up to eighty to the green team's fifty. Ouch. You know," he added to the green team while the next two contestants stepped to the back of the room, a hand on the wall, empty space before them from which the desks had been cleared. "They're kicking your asses."

The two teams were lumped on either side of the room with the desks, hollering for their teammates and booing the opposing students. Dean had come up with the idea flipping channels the previous night. He'd landed on a few game shows, and immediately afterwards he'd researched some historical stuff on Sam's computer to use as trivia questions and hoped that the internet got everything right.

Everyone in the class was getting into it—so much so, at times, that he had to tell them to quiet down so that he wouldn't get in trouble with the principal. The walls weren't exactly made of soundproof steel.

There was one student, however, who seemed completely disinterested in the activity and stood quietly in line waiting to approach the wall. She'd had one turn, racing the other student to the desk and slapping it first. But when it came time to answer, her distracted mind showed through, and she'd stared at Dean with wide eyes as though shocked that she didn't know the answer before conceding the victory to the blue team.

Audrey.

After her small defeat, she'd slouched back to the wall, eyes wide as though dazed. No one paid her any mind; her losing green team hadn't even commented on her lackluster performance despite the fact that, Dean had gathered, she was usually an ambitious know-it-all student. They gave her slack. She'd found a dead guy.

Except that she'd been fine two days ago. Today she looked as though she'd seen a…

And it clicked. Dean glanced down at his notes and shook his head, reining his focus back to the game. "Uh, right… Next question."

He ended class early, telling everyone they could wait by the door or sneak out into the hallway if there weren't any prison guards (or, you know, hall monitors) on the prowl. "Losing team helps put the desks back," he announced, which elicited some groans from the green team. Audrey fell back to a corner, painstakingly straightening a desk. Perfectionist, too. Dean fell back beside her as chatter broke out among the losers.

"Either you're faking this to get out of any real work, or something's up. And I only consider the former because you told me you were planning on using a student's death to get out of a pop quiz," he greeted nonchalantly, sliding a desk to its row and leaving it crooked. Audrey stalked over to it and straightened it out before looking up at him with something akin to shame in her blazing, disdainful eyes.

"I found a dead guy. That can't be enough?" she asked, her voice sounding a bit hollow.

"It would be if you hadn't already proved to me that it wasn't," Dean countered, choosing his next words carefully, constructing an easy, offhand tone. "Tuesday, you were fine. Today, you look like you've seen a ghost."

Audrey pulled a face that suggested she had swallowed a ball of feathers. She leaned against the desk she had straightened, staring at its surface. "Nice try. Ghosts don't exist," she replied without any semblance of certainty.

Dean nodded, crossing his arms. "Uh-huh. It's just a story to scare the freshman, right?"

"I think I'm losing my mind," she murmured matter-of-factly, glancing up at Dean, mouth set in a hard line. She sucked in a breath through her nose, letting her arms dangle loosely by her sides. "Gonna have to suck it up, though. Dress rehearsal this afternoon. There's an understudy just dying for me to go as bonkers as my character so she can snatch up the part in time for tomorrow's opening performance."

"Who's your character?" Dean asked as the bell rang and the remaining students who hadn't already escaped filtered out of the room.

A ghost of a smirk flitted over Audrey's mouth. "Lady Macbeth."

"I remember reading _Macbeth_ in school," Dean offered as Audrey grabbed her backpack from the floor. "Witches, murder, evil power plays. Unlucky to say the name."

"That's the one," Audrey replied, looking undeniably relieved that the conversation was taking her mind in a different direction than its previous path. She nodded to Dean before following the other students out the door, and he was left in the empty classroom with several crooked rows of desks staring back at him.

"Yeah…" he muttered to himself, trying to remember the stories he'd heard about the unlucky Scottish play and the actors who had died in freak accidents while performing it. "That doesn't bode well."

* * *

Hot, blinding lights washed over her, casting the rest of the auditorium in darkness. Her voice echoed when she spoke, carried by the room's acoustics. Her black gown was heavy. Her lines were floating around in her head, waiting to be called to the fore, settling back until it was time for her tongue to feel around the elegant words. Even without an audience, this was where the rush of acting would normally come for Audrey: the exhilaration of being in the spotlight, of showing her talent, of not knowing whether she would remember the lines or how they would come out tonight.

But this afternoon, the usual exhilaration had taken a backseat to a constant, distant, aching dread that clouded her usual cool, clear mind and made her slick tongue fumble over familiar dialogue.

Macbeth was arguing with her, refusing to frame the grooms for King Duncan's murder. Audrey tried to keep her mind steady as he spoke and paced, but she could not stop her eyes from darting about, expecting to see a child hanging from the ceiling with blood dripping down from its empty eye sockets…

_No_, she told herself, _impossible. Your mind is playing tricks._

But it looked so real. As real as Brian's mangled, sliced up face. Her stomach turned.

"Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures." She hesitated, stumbling over this line, seeing Brian in her head. "'Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil. If…" Her voice trailed off, eyes trying to see past the bright lights and into the dark auditorium. Usually it was a relief not to have to see the faces; today it was torture not knowing what lay in the dark. She blinked. "If—if…" Her mind blanked. She saw Brian's face, his missing lips. Blood. "If he do bleed, I'll guild the faces of the grooms withal, for it must seem their guilt."

Audrey let out a relieved breath after stuttering her lines, knowing full well that if she did that in the performance Mr. Lindaugh would never give her another part. With a jolt she remembered that she was supposed to exit briefly, and she grabbed the plastic knife from Macbeth's hand and hurried offstage.

She stood just behind the thick curtain, listening for the end of Macbeth's short monologue. Turning to face the dark hallway that led backstage, she took a few breaths and forced her heart to calm its frantic beating. She was _not_ afraid of the dark. That was ridiculous. _There's no such thing as ghosts. Get a grip._

But at the end of the hall, where it turned a corner and opened up into a larger backstage area, hung two children, heads cocked outward, bodies limp. Their mouths and noses were sawed away, and they seemed to stare at her through eyeless, triangular sockets. Blood dripped down their faces and pooled on the floor beneath their feet where their shadows should have been.

Horror pulsed through Audrey's body, and she squeezed her eyes shut, taking sharp, panicked breaths. This was not happening.

There was an odd silence all around her. Then she realized that Macbeth had stopped speaking. After a moment, he repeated uncertainly, "…making the green one _red_."

Pulling a red scarf out of her pocket and draping it over her hands, Audrey stepped back onstage, squinting in the bright lights. "My hands are of your color," she began, voice wavering, hands trembling beneath the scarf that was meant to symbolize blood. "But I shame to wear a heart so white."

She continued her lines in a lackluster monotone, eyes carefully averted from the curtain hiding the backstage area. _You're losing it_, she thought as she recited her lines. _Get a grip. You can do this. Stop acting like a child._

Somehow she managed to choke out the rest of her lines for the scene, and she bolted down the empty, dark backstage hall to the main area, half-expecting to slip on a puddle of blood and all the while thinking that she was insane for expecting that. There was no blood. There were no schoolchildren. There was no such thing as ghosts.

When they broke for intermission, Audrey took pains to avoid Mr. Lindaugh and what would certainly be a harsh reproof for her lack of concentration. Of course, he never complimented when she did well because she always did well. If you're on top of your game 100 of the time, nobody bats an eye. You're simply expected to be perfect. If a slacker suddenly aces a test, he's rewarded beyond all measure. Shower the prodigal son with praise. But if you're always great at what you do, then once you perform less than spectacularly, they release the hounds on you.

That's how it was, and that's how it had always been. Most of the time Audrey sucked it up and handled it because the knowledge of her success cancelled out the superfluous criticism when she made a mistake. But today—today she thought she might vomit if she saw one more carved up face, one more drop of blood, and her nerves were on fire, and today she thought she might snap and start shouting at Mr. Lindaugh if he called her out on her performance.

Luckily, he didn't seek her out. She grabbed a water bottle and retreated to the hallway behind the doors to backstage, which was empty and dim. She took a long drink, heart fluttering like a hummingbird's.

Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the wall, face tilted up, eyes catching the dim glow of the few overhead lights that were still turned on through her eyelids. When a shadow fell over her and the insides of her eyelids turned from warm orange to black, she snapped them open and flinched against the wall.

"Whoa, easy," came a familiar voice, and it took Audrey a disorienting moment to realize that Brian's ghost hadn't showed up, that it was just Mr. Robinson the history sub. She released her breath in a whoosh.

"Sorry," she murmured. "I didn't hear you walk over."

He shrugged. For a teacher, he was remarkably laidback and cool. And handsome, but Audrey thought it was tacky to have a crush on a teacher, so she didn't. "Just checkin' out the dress rehearsal. I stopped in for some of it; looks like it'll be a good show."

Audrey nodded mechanically. "Yep. Despite every setback, we're still going strong. We've got a new Banquo, we've got a sold-out show tomorrow… As long as no superstitious loonies start blaming the play for our bad luck, it might actually be a success," she blabbered, feeling calmer talking about the play in a light, breezy manner. It always worked for her. Pretend you're calm, and soon you'll _feel_ calm.

Mr. Robinson nodded, eyes hooded and unreadable. There was something off about him that Audrey couldn't put her finger on. She knew a lot of laidback subs, but Mr. Robinson sure took the cake. He didn't seem to care one way or another if he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. "By the way," she added carefully. "I know Mrs. Hadley left a lesson plan. She's a meticulously organized person. She even color-codes her worksheets. So however much fun we're having this week, I don't know if that'll make up for the amount of work we're going to have to do to catch up." She took another swig from her water bottle, gauging his reaction, happy to have something to focus on other than dead people.

He nodded again, looking slightly guilty. "I'm sure she'll let you get out of whatever work she piles up on everyone when she gets back," he challenged. "Or are you done milking your classmate's death?"

Audrey had no response. It felt like a punch to the gut. After the way she'd run off at the mouth on Tuesday, though, she didn't blame him for throwing her callousness back in her face. Didn't mean it didn't sting, but Audrey would never let on that it did. She was made of stone.

"I don't know." She shrugged, a picture of indifference. "Maybe another week or two before the excuse gets stale."

She could tell that Mr. Robinson disliked her, and this comment was doing nothing to alleviate that sentiment. Oh well. She didn't need people to like her, as long as they had some respect for her.

"Listen," he said quietly after a moment, the smirk gone from his face, voice deadly serious. "I know you think you're going crazy. But you need to tell me if you see anything… unusual. Okay?"

"Why?" she blurted.

He seemed to search for an adequate response. "Because… because I'm your teacher. That's what I'm here for. To, you know, help my students."

"I'll keep that in mind," she replied wryly, looking up as the lights flashed once, signaling that intermission was over. "That's my cue."

Feeling less on the verge of freaking out, Audrey turned away from Mr. Robinson, thinking that ghosts weren't real and that there were no such things as haunted schools.

* * *

_Dean knew that haunted houses were real. He was just surprised the old lady did, too._

_At twenty-one, he'd gone on plenty of hunts in his time, and seen all sorts of things, but one thing that always surprised him was when they ran into the rare person who casually accepted the existence of the supernatural. Wilhelmina Baker, a dotty old cat lady who had once been a journalist and world traveler, had gotten John's name from a friend of a friend's second cousin who was familiar with the business, and upon their arrival a few days before Halloween, she had smiled pleasantly and said, "Thank you for coming. My house is haunted."_

_And once they were settled in for a cup of tea, she'd continued, "I did some research. My house used to belong to a violent young couple who got into a bit of a spat once, resulting in the wife shooting her husband and making off with his money. I believe the man is still angry about it. He makes quite a racket at night."_

_Then she'd sipped her tea and smiled. "Can you help?"_

_Dean had been baffled; they'd hardly had to do any real work. The research was already done. They just had to find out where the guy was buried. Plus Mina had offered a small payment for their efforts._

_Sam was stubbornly refusing to help out, and when John forced him to do research, he grumbled, put down his senior year homework, and reluctantly obeyed. Visiting the house during the day was rather dull; they hadn't gotten any EMF. All they'd managed to do was garner odd looks from Mina's fifteen-year-old neighbor, Joey, and discover that Sam was probably allergic to cats._

_So, sending the lady away for the night, they had gone in after dark, expecting the ghost of the house's former inhabitant to appear. Dean led Sam down the main hall while John moved upstairs, guns filled with iron rounds at the ready, small bags of salt in their pockets._

_Sam's gun was tucked away; instead he held the EMF, which was ominously quiet in his hands._

_They crept down the hall through the darkness; a cat slunk off to the left, meowing mournfully, its yellow eyes glowing in the dark. Sam sneezed, trying to muffle the sound with his sleeve. Mina's patterned green curtains hung still over the open windows; the night was warm, and there was no breeze. Dean stepped carefully into the high-ceilinged dining room, wooden floor creaking under his boots. A sliver of moonlight slanted through the crack in the green curtains, insects buzzing outside the open window._

_The curtain rippled as if something had hit it, but Dean felt no breeze. A light flickered behind it as it fluttered again, and a low, guttural groan issued from beyond the curtain. Dean raised his gun, waiting for it to move again. Sam stood still behind him._

_A burst of force ripped the curtain to the side, revealing a pale, dark-eyed face looming through the open window, and Dean didn't hesitate in pulling the trigger._

_The iron bullet sailed out the window and thunked into the trunk of a tree; the face had disappeared._

_And then a voice was crying, from just below the open window, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"_

_Heavy footsteps bounded down the stairs behind them._

_Dean stepped closer to the window, spying two hands raised in the air, poking out just above the ledge. The head was slowly rising up again, eyes wide and terrified, mouth still begging him not to shoot._

_It was Joey, the neighbor, dressed in black, lurking outside the window. A flashlight, which was still switched on, lay on the ground beside him, spilling a shaft of light onto the grass._

_Dean felt his heart leap into his throat, adrenaline coursing through him._

_"What the hell is going on here?" John demanded._

_"Don't shoot," Joey pleaded again, hands trembling, now standing right in front of the window with his hands still raised in surrender. "I'm sorry, we thought it would be a laugh, it was just a joke—"_

_"We?" Dean asked._

_"My—my friends and me," Joey stammered in a rush, still looking panicked. "We thought it would be funny. To make her think her house was haunted, you know. It was just a joke. A stupid Halloween joke."_

_Dean took a few deep breaths._

_"Get out of here," John ordered quietly, and Joey nodded, turned, and darted away—probably to go round up his buddies situated around the outside of the house—without bothering to pick up his flashlight._

_Dean couldn't stop his heart from pounding. He could have shot that kid. He almost_ did _shoot that kid. With iron bullets meant to repel a ghost. Iron bullets that would have killed him. Dean was a good shot. He rarely missed. If that kid hadn't ducked…_

_He could have killed that kid. All for a stupid prank._

_"Guess we better go tell Mina her ghost problem has been taken care of," John suggested, putting the safety back on his gun._

_Sam raised his eyebrows at their dad. "Are you going to tell her there was no ghost to begin with?"_

_John frowned at him. "You think she'll pay us if she finds out it was just some dopey kid all along?"_

_"We didn't do anything!" Sam argued as he followed John back to the front door._

_"We need that money for gas," John replied without raising his voice, but the danger and ice coming through his gruff words was a neon sign telling Sam to drop the subject._

_Sam did, but not before grumbling sarcastically, "Why don't you just use one of your illegal fake credit cards…"_

_Dean knew that they needed the money. He also knew that it wasn't particularly noble to scam some old lady out of her money when they hadn't actually done anything but shoot her tree and scare the shit out of Joey. But his first instinct was to listen to his dad, and right now he couldn't do much more than that, for his hands were still shaking and his heart was still pounding and he had to wipe off the sweat still beading on his forehead. John and Sam didn't seem to care that Joey had nearly taken a bullet in the face: they knew he was okay. He was fine. Dean knew that too. But he also knew that if the kid had been a little slower ducking, Dean would be staring at a corpse outside the window right now, and he didn't think he could handle that. He didn't think he could handle it if he'd shot that kid, if he'd_ killed _him…_

_It would be okay. John was a good liar. He'd sell Mina some story about how they'd sent the spirit of the man out of the house, and she would hand over some money._

_He'd almost killed Joey, but it would be okay._

_Sam glanced back at him as they walked out of the house and to the waiting Impala. "You okay, man?"_

_Dean was a good liar, too._

_"Yeah, I'm fine."_

_Happy freakin' Halloween._

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Thanks, once again, for the replies. You guys are awesome readers! We're building up to the climax..._

* * *

Sam sat in his baggy gray custodian uniform, arms crossed, staring out his window as Dean pulled out of the motel parking lot.

"We've been here for a week," he pointed out.

Dean raised an eyebrow at him. "So?"

"We haven't gotten anywhere on this case."

"And… what? You wanna just give up, this one's too hard, boo-hoo?" Dean retorted, looking incredulous.

Sam rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying there are more important things we could be doing right now."

"More important than stopping the murderous ghost of a psycho teacher with a fetish for jack-o-lanterns?"

Sam didn't respond right away. He knew Dean wasn't going to try and get himself out of his deal, and that he would sabotage Sam's attempts every chance he got. But if they couldn't spend Halloween happily hiding in a motel avoiding the fact that the holiday made their job insanely hard, then he wanted to be doing something useful. Trying to stop Dean from going to hell would be a logical choice there.

"Right," Dean murmured wryly, and Sam thought Dean might have figured out his train of thought. Sam wasn't in the habit of continuing the existence of homicidal ghosts, but frankly, his brother was more important. Not that this new, brash, laugh-in-the-face-of-death Dean would ever admit he was afraid of what would happen when his year ran up.

Sam cleared his throat. "When's the real teacher coming back?" he asked.

"I don't know, next week? I just wish I could have gotten the pay for all the hard work I've been doing," Dean suggested with a wistful grin.

Sam snorted. "Yeah. Hard work. Have you done anything you were supposed to?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I just…" Sam hesitated. "I mean, you're not exactly teacher material, you know?"

Dean eased the Impala to a stop at the red light, turning fully to Sam. "You think _I_ should be the janitor and _you_ should be the teacher?"

"Well…" Sam wanted to say that it would be a better fit but he saw that Dean's face had gone stony and tried to figure out what had made him so angry about the conversation.

"I wouldn't mind that, you know. Being the janitor."

That threw Sam for a loop. He had been starting to think that Dean was annoyed because Sam pointed out the obvious fact that Sam was the academic one in the family. "Huh?"

"It's a job, you know," Dean said. "But you just piss all over it. You act like there's something… demeaning about bein' a janitor."

"You were the one who made fun of me for it."

Dean rolled his eyes. "I was kidding, jeez, Sam."

Sam tried to dissect what Dean was telling him. "So why are you all gung-ho for custodians?"

They were pulling into the school parking lot. Dean put his foot on the brake and turned off the engine. "Dad had a lot of crappy jobs when funds were low, and he worked his ass off. But I know the best-earned paycheck he ever got was as a school janitor."

Well, he hadn't been expecting that. Sam blinked in surprise. "What? When was that?"

Dean shrugged, pulling on his sport coat. "I dunno. You were real little." He dropped his keys into his pocket and opened the car door. "I'm just sayin', there's nothing wrong with being a janitor."

Sam nodded and got out of the car, waiting until Dean had entered the building to make his way to the school in order to draw attention away from the two of them arriving together.

Feeling slightly ashamed at his reaction to their temporary jobs, he tried to distract his mind from both this new knowledge of their dad and the fact that Dean was going to hell while they played high school dress up, and instead focus on a way to end the case, and soon. It was October 26. Halloween was fast approaching.

And he knew that if this case lasted that long, that's when the shit would really hit the fan.

* * *

Today, Dean followed the lesson plan that Mrs. Hadley had left. It was actually the lesson plan from the first day, but seeing as the classes were a bit behind, he figured it was the way to go. When he told the class that they were going to read quietly from their textbooks, they had looked scandalized, giving him wide-eyed, accusing stares that clearly said that he was the _cool_ sub; he wasn't supposed to make them do the boring, useless busywork.

Jimmy had made a nasty comment about how it was no wonder Mr. Robinson was a sub and not a _real_ teacher.

Dean ignored it, focusing on his own thoughts of where Miss Carver's body could be buried.

Every so often he lost his focus and wondered if maybe Sam was right about him not being teacher material.

But then, halfway through the class, Carrie had raised her hand. He nodded to her.

"You already taught us this chapter," she announced.

Dean raised his eyebrows in confusion. He hadn't taught them anything.

She went on. "This is all about the colony called Roanoke. You already taught us this."

Some other students were nodding, looking as though they had already figured it out but hadn't wanted to raise their hands.

"Oh," was all Dean could think to say. A grin curled up on his face. "Then I guess we should move on to a new topic."

They watched him with anticipation. Dean felt an odd mixture of pride and mystification.

He'd _taught_ them something.

* * *

Marty adjusted his sky blue tie in the mirror before walking back over to the phone and pressing 'play' on the answering machine again.

"Hi again, Mr. Robinson. This is Linda from Fair Hill High School. Mrs. Hadley won't be returning for several more weeks due to her leg injury, and we were hoping that you could extend your position from a substitute to a temporary teacher in her stead. Please call back to let us know…"

He couldn't help but be confused by such a message. He didn't _have_ a subbing position at Fair Hill High. He really needed a job to continue paying his bills, and he'd been hoping for a call… but this wasn't the kind of call he'd been expecting. Which was why he was going over to the school this afternoon in person to get it all straightened out. And hopefully he would come out of it with a job.

* * *

The kids were all dispersing, eager for the weekend.

Sam and Dean stood by the janitor's closet as the last stragglers trickled out, free for two whole days.

"What if she never got away?" Sam was suggesting as he put away his cleaning supplies. "I mean, all around the schoolhouse was a big, empty field. She would have had to run a long way in the open to escape before the parents arrived and found their kids. _Someone_ would have seen her running away."

"So you think she… what, exactly? Hid at the school until after the parents found their kids, and _then_ left?"

"Maybe…" Sam shrugged. "Or maybe she just.. stayed there until she died. They didn't use the schoolhouse again for years, until they renovated it and made it bigger. And the stories say nobody ever saw Miss Carver outside of the school. Maybe she… _lived_ there. And died there. And somebody… buried her there."

Dean sighed. "It's a possibility. If her remains are here, and she's drawing her power both from that and from her favorite place, then that would explain how well she manipulates stuff here. Still… that leaves quite a few holes."

"I know," Sam replied. "Let's come back tonight and see what we find."

"Tonight…" Dean frowned, wondering why it seemed there was something important going on. "Full moon tonight," he commented, but that wasn't it. Then it clicked. "Opening night for the school play, too. _Macbeth_."

"Oh. Great. How much you wanna bet something's going to go wrong?"

Dean shook his head, having already heard the rumors starting to fly about the cursed Scottish play. "Let's hope we can take the evil bitch out before anything happens."

* * *

Marty rubbed his forehead in frustration. "I'm telling you the truth. I haven't been here all week. I've never had a job here. There must be some mistake," he offered with forced calm.

Linda was clearly not a very bright woman, but Marty liked to think the best of people, so he hoped that she would realize that he wasn't lying or pulling her leg. "I have it on record that you've been here since Tuesday," she repeated, tapping her long pink nails on the desk in the main office. Her blonde curls bobbed when she shook her head. "You've been teaching Mrs. Hadley's history classes."

Sighing, Marty tried to let go of his annoyance at this circular conversation that had already gone on for far too long. "But _I_ haven't been here. I haven't taught a single class."

Linda moved her fingers to the keyboard of her computer, not typing anything but tapping her long nails restlessly on the plastic surface. "Mr. Robinson, if you haven't been teaching those classes, then who has?"

* * *

Sam stood in the dim, empty hallway behind the auditorium, listening to the muffled echoes of projected voices from onstage. They were well into the play, and so far nothing had gone wrong. Sam took that as a good sign. Maybe Miss Carver would be quiet tonight.

"So, if she was buried somewhere on the premises, it would have to be somewhere around where the original schoolhouse was," Sam explained as they made their way down the silent hall, EMF meter in hand.

"Why hasn't she done anything until now, though?" Dean asked. "I mean, what happened? There she is, merrily going about her death, when 118 years later she randomly decides to act up and slaughter some students?"

"I don't know," Sam admitted as they approached the boys bathroom. The EMF meter whined. "If she's buried, she's under here. How are we going to tear up the floorboards without getting caught?"

They walked into the bathroom, and Sam flicked on the light. The EMF meter continued to screech at them, echoing around the tiled room.

Black writing covered the walls haphazardly, in the same hand that Sam had witnessed scribbling on these same tile walls four days ago. It was jumbled, the schizophrenic messages covering everything.

I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS

ONLY BAD ONES

ALL BAD STUDENTS

ALL STUDENTS ARE BAD STUDENTS

And on the mirror, the one that reflected the four stalls behind the four sinks, the one that had reflected Brian's mutilated face, a sinister proverb:

THE MOUTH OF THE JUST BRINGETH FORTH WISDOM: BUT THE FROWARD TONGUE SHALL BE CUT OUT – Proverbs 10.31

Sam glanced at Dean, uneasiness in his stomach. It certainly didn't help matters that on top of being a stickler for the rules, Miss Carver was also a religious nut, which was probably the most dangerous kind. Sam rubbed at the message, but it had been written on the mirror in permanent marker, reflecting on itself and giving it the look of something seen with double vision.

"Hey, Sam?"

Dean sounded hesitant behind him, a note of revulsion in his voice. Sam turned around to find Dean standing in the second stall, frowning down at the toilet.

"What?" He stepped over to his brother and looked into the bowl.

The water was stained red with blood, and in it floated bits of flesh: two eyeballs, a torn-up nose, strips of skin that vaguely resembled lips, and lumpy pink tissue that could only be a tongue.

Sam thought he was going to be sick.

But driving past the nausea rolling in his stomach was the understanding that Miss Carver had struck again.

"Come on, we gotta finish this before things get out of hand," Dean suggested, pulling the salt gun from its hiding place at the back of his pants and handing it to Sam with one hand while taking the EMF meter from him with the other and turning it off.

As they exited the bathroom, a wave of noise exploded from the direction of the auditorium; it sounded as if every person present was screaming at the top of his lungs.

Sam glanced at Dean, who looked alarmed.

"I think things just got out of hand."

* * *

So far, Audrey was putting on her best performance.

The audience and the lights and the stage had blanked her mind of its previous worries and focused it entirely upon her character; when she spoke her lines, she became Lady Macbeth and embodied her callousness, her confidence, her cunning.

They'd had only a few setbacks. Two people on the makeup crew had shown up late and had to work frantically when they'd gotten there. One of the three messengers, who'd been sick all week, hadn't shown up or even contacted Mr. Lindaugh, which had pooled red rage in his eyes. Duncan had misplaced his costume, but thankfully it had been found at the last minute.

And now Audrey was dominating her scenes, playing off Macbeth and the other characters. The only time she found herself faltering was when Banquo was mentioned. The new Banquo knew the part well, but the eerie fog of Brian's death still surrounded the role, and it didn't help that Banquo died in the middle of the play and returned as a ghost. It made Audrey expect to see Brian somewhere, hiding in a corner.

The irony of Lady Macbeth's descent into madness was not lost on her, either, but she felt more composed now than she had in three days. She portrayed the part well, scrubbing her hands of imaginary blood, staring wide-eyed into the distance, mumbling her lines with the frantic insistence of the insane.

"Wash your hands. Put on your nightgown. Look not so pale," she spoke to herself, drifting around the stage while the doctor and gentlewoman discussed her madness. "I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out of his grave."

At that moment, something large and obviously heavy dropped from the ceiling; it fell before Audrey's eyes but came to an abrupt stop several feet above the stage, bouncing with the force of something stopping its plunge, which turned out to be a long rope attached to the beam of lights.

Audrey blinked as the contrast between the dark audience and blinding lights cast the object in obscurity. But after a moment she recognized what it was.

It was the third messenger.

The rope was tied in a noose around his neck, his body hanging limp, his eyes and nose and lips cut away in jagged lines, blood dripping like tears down his face.

The audience seemed to realize what it was at the same moment that Audrey did, for the deafening roar that erupted in the house drowned out her terrified, piercing scream.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Can I just say, you guys spoil me? You really do. I just gush with happiness when I read your reviews. Thank you for reading and dropping feedback. We are nearing the end! In fact, there's only one more chapter after this one. Things are going to have to get worse before they get better, though..._

* * *

Marty had been there for hours, arguing with Linda and listening to her make phone calls as afternoon sank into evening. After all this time trying to figure out what had gone wrong and who the mystery teacher was, they still knew nothing, and he was starting to get restless and irritated. He was a calm, composed man on most occasions, but right then he would have liked nothing better than to shake Linda, who stared at him with vacant eyes and was probably a wino. He was sure he smelled liquor on her breath when she got close, which had only angered him more.

But then a thunder of noise rose up, echoing to the main office, distant and hard to place. It sounded like five hundred people screaming at once, but that didn't make any sense.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway as two people ran past outside. Marty could tell when the auditorium doors opened because the sound lost its muffler, spilled out clearly into the hallway, footsteps and screams and panicked voices.

"What is going on?" he murmured, stepping to the door of the office and looking out.

Linda appeared at his side, finally having come out from behind her desk. She, too, gazed into the hall.

"I have no idea."

* * *

The members of the audience had risen from their seats like a unified, amorphous amoeba; some remained where they were, frozen by fear, while others immediately pooled in the aisles and tripped over one another in a scurry to the exit, as if they thought that the appearance of the body was a result of some contagious disease.

Audrey took a stumbling step backwards, her foot sliding on the hem of her long black Lady Macbeth dress, and with a jarring, painful stab on her tailbone, she found herself sitting on the stage, eyes still locked on Messenger #3's bloody face. Her brain seemed to be unraveling because she thought she saw him transform into Brian, and then into a little kid from the 1800's, and then back again like overlapping pictures.

The curtains leading backstage rustled, and two tall figures appeared, having run in from the back door. One of them hurried over to her and crouched down.

"Audrey. Audrey, are you okay?"

It was Mr. Robinson. She felt dazed and cut off from reality. What was going on? She thought she should respond. She nodded. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth.

"Dean," came an unfamiliar voice, and Mr. Robinson glanced away, up at the thing hanging from the ceiling, and then back at her. "Just stay here for a minute, okay?"

Okay, that sounded fine. She could just sit here. The auditorium seemed to be exploding, but that was okay, she was just going to sit here and everything would be fine.

Mr. Robinson was talking to someone; their voices drifted around her like the morphing reality. She felt cold.

"We need to get everybody out of here." That was Mr. Robinson's voice.

"They're trying pretty hard to do that on her own. But they don't seem to be… hang on."

Footsteps running off. Everything seemed to be getting more and more distant. Something told Audrey that this was not a good sign, that her brain was trying to get away from the horror hanging in front of her: the horror of finding Brian and seeing those dead children all over school and having Messenger #3 drop down practically on top of her.

"Audrey, you still with me?"

She blinked. Mr. Robinson was in front of her. She felt herself nod.

Footsteps coming back, heavy, vibrating the stage beneath her.

"Uh, bad news. Doors are locked."

"What, you kiddin' me? The bitch locked us all in!"

"Yeah, looks like."

"Damn." A pause. "We gotta end this. 'Cause if Miss Carver doesn't hurt someone, these people are gonna start hurting themselves tryin' to get out—"

"Dean! Down!"

The other man shouted this just as Audrey felt a scratchy rope loop around her neck and tug. There was the crack of a gunshot somewhere above her head and then she was flying backward, pulled by the rope, sliding along the floor; her legs dragged uselessly, and she instinctively grabbed onto the rope and yanked at it to no avail as it tightened painfully around her throat. The speed picked up, and she was flying along the floor, the stage becoming a blur as she slid into the dark backstage area, then out into a hall, careening faster than should have been possible.

Her numbness was breaking, shoved out of the way by abject terror, and she started kicking and scrabbling at her neck and gasping for breath and screaming because she realized who was behind her, who was pulling her along, and who would kill her. The hallway slipped away as she was wrenched around a corner, and then she was soaring into a classroom, and then the door was slamming shut, and then everything stopped.

* * *

"You missed!" Dean roared, immediately sprinting to the curtain that led backstage, where Audrey had disappeared, Miss Carver grinning and holding the rope around her neck as she vanished and pulled the girl backwards.

Sam, still clutching the gun, followed; Dean could hear his heavy footfalls keeping up just behind him, so he sped up, ran into a door and slammed it open as he tumbled into the dim hallway and caught his balance.

There were two very shocked people standing there. One was a woman with curly blonde hair, her mouth hanging open. The other was a distinguished middle-aged man wearing a sky-blue tie and wide eyes.

"Marty!" Dean cried out as he stumbled to a stop, Sam nearly colliding with his back. His eyes darted around the hall—_which way did they go? _"Buddy! What are you, what are you doing here?"

"I just… I just… Paul?" The normally eloquent man seemed at a loss for words, brow furrowing, looking utterly baffled.

"Wait a minute," the woman spoke up, eyes narrowing. "I talked to you on the phone. _You're_ Marty Robinson!"

"I—what?" Marty stammered.

Dean opened his mouth and found he had nothing to say. He held it open for a moment before speaking slowly and uncertainly, "Yes I am."

"What—no you're not!" Marty's voice shot up in pitch, face reddening, completely flustered.

He had nothing. Dean shook his head. "No I'm not. And I can explain that. But not now. Which way did the redhead go?"

"Wait, if you're not Marty Robinson," the woman shouted, "Who is?"

Marty rounded on the—apparently not too bright—woman and shouted, "_I'M_ MARTY ROBINSON, YOU BRAINLESS BUFFOON!"

Dean rolled his eyes. "What he said. Which way?"

Marty, looking dazed and surprised at his own outburst, pointed to his left.

Dean nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. "Nice chat." Then he took off once again, chasing after Miss Carver and Audrey, aware now of where he was going.

He practically slammed into the wall as he lurched into the empty boys bathroom before spinning around and doubling back, turning the corner, and revolving in a full circle to figure out which classroom would have been where the old schoolhouse was. He was vaguely aware that Sam was no longer behind him, but that didn't stop him from grabbing onto the handle of the closed door and twisting uselessly.

"Open up, you crazy bitch!" he shouted through the door, pounding on the wood. Stepping back, he drove his foot forward, kicking it twice before the handle turned and the door swung inward to admit him of its own accord.

And he found himself face-to-face with the Carver.

She looked as she had before: graying hair in a tight bun, glasses on the tip of her pointed nose, colors washed out on her old-fashioned brown dress.

Audrey was on the floor behind her, rope lying by her feet, eyes wide.

"We have a new student, class. Say hello to Dean Winchester," Miss Carver spoke softly, voice deceptively smooth like honey. "Would Dean like to come in?" She canted her head slightly to the left.

"You only kill bad students. Let Audrey go. She's a good student. I'm her teacher," Dean spat, realizing the absurdity of reasoning with a ghost.

"Dean would like to learn, class, but I can only teach one student at a time," she replied with lilting indifference. "Audrey is not a good student. She would rather cheat than fail. She is a liar." She tilted her head in the other direction. "Like you."

Damn it, where was Sam with the salt gun?

"Dean is not a very good student." Miss Carver clicked her tongue and shook her head. "He must learn his lesson."

Static electricity sparked in the air, and what seemed like a violent wind pushed Audrey along the floor and right out into the hallway. She stared up at Dean, looking dazed, and he only had a moment to register that she was okay before the same force tugged him inside the room and the door slammed shut behind him.

Catching his balance, Dean immediately stepped to the door and grabbed the handle, but it wouldn't budge. When he turned around, he was no longer in the empty classroom.

He was in _her_ classroom.

He was in the schoolhouse.

Everything about it was old-fashioned, from the wooden desks and the lack of electrical lights, to the expansive blackboard at the front. There were lanterns placed about the room for light.

Miss Carver stood, quite calmly, with her wooden pointing stick in her hand.

"Shall we give Dean his first lesson, class?" Miss Carver asked, and Dean realized who she was talking to when he looked around and found that the seats were no longer empty.

There was a student in every seat, clad in trousers and dresses of a similar style to Miss Carver's. They sat perfectly still, watching Dean expectantly—or, he thought they were. Their eyes were nothing more than bloody triangular sockets; their noses were upside-down triangles; their lips were jagged slices cut away from their skin, curving up into their cheeks and forcing them to smile. Nooses were wrapped loosely around their necks, the rope slinking away to the ceiling where it tied around the wooden beams that hadn't been there in the modern classroom.

Miss Carver was still standing at the front of the room, eyes on Dean. "_A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue_," she quoted. "You are a liar, Dean. And you must be taught a lesson."

She stepped forward and pressed a stick of chalk into Dean's hand. He took it warily, aware that she had so far made no move to slice his face open.

"I want you to write 'I will not lie' on the board," she told him, and Dean snorted, stepping up to the left side of the blackboard. If this was what she wanted him to do, he'd play her little game. Sam would show up sooner or later with the gun, or the body, or preferably both, and until then he could play her little game.

"How many times should I write it, _teacher_?" he asked with a smirk, readying his hand with the chalk pressed against the board.

A slow grin curled up on her face, eyes dark through her glasses. "As many as will fit on the board."

Dean shook his head. Too easy.

He looked right.

His stomach dropped.

The board stretched on and on, seemingly endless on his right side, disappearing into the distance where the room had apparently been stretched to accommodate the immeasurable blackboard.

Oh. Crap.

* * *

Sam was about to take off after Dean down the hall when the man who was obviously Marty Robinson burst out, "Can you please tell me what's going on here?"

"Uh…" Sam stalled, gazing around, keeping tabs of where Dean had gone. He'd been heading to where the old schoolhouse had been. But this man and woman were staring at him as though he were an alien—_well_, he thought, _I am swinging a gun around, and I still have my custodian uniform on_—and on top of that, he could hear the commotion continuing in the auditorium, the clamor as people pressed up against the exits in the lobby. He figured soon they would start swarming to the side halls that flanked the auditorium, and then this back hall as well, looking for other doors around the school that might be open but which Sam didn't even have to check to know they were locked.

"I can," the woman cut in. "That man's been pretending to be you all week."

Marty stared at her incredulously. "I _know_ that, Linda. But why? And how? And who are you?" He directed this last question at Sam.

"That's… a good question," he replied, starting to edge around Marty. "One which I will be happy to answer… later." He started jogging after Dean, but before he could get too far, a girl appeared from a side hallway and hurried his way. "Hey!" he called out as she neared. "Hey—Audrey, right?"

She stopped and her eyes traveled over him, her nose scrunching with disdain at his gray uniform. "Yeah?" she whispered cautiously.

"Where did D—where did Mr. Robinson go?"

"I'm right here!" Marty shouted from behind him. Sam rolled his eyes and clenched his hands into fists, ignoring him.

"He…" She shook her head, letting out a deep breath. "I don't… She took him."

"Who? Miss Carver."

Looking horrified, Audrey nodded. Sam was just about to take off down the hall in the direction she'd come when she spluttered, "She locked him in. I tried opening the door." She shook her head.

"Great," Sam muttered. "Okay. I need to find her body, then. I might need your help."

Audrey seemed to push through the shock and fear marring her features. "You're… a janitor."

Sam wanted to slap her but managed to restrain himself. No time. "Yeah. It's Halloween. This is my costume. Besides," he added, tucking the gun back into his pants. "Mopping's not really what I had in mind."

* * *

_Dean knew that Sam's friends at school—at every school they ended up in—asked him why he didn't dress up for Halloween._

_Nobody at school—at any school they ended up in—asked Dean why he didn't dress up. Probably because he didn't hang out with anyone often enough for them to notice or care. He didn't need a Halloween costume, anyway: he was always already something unique. At one school he was the criminal destined for a life in the big house. At another he was the geek who read books on Latin even though the school didn't offer that as a language. At another he was the class clown always skipping out on detention. And on Halloween, when everyone was dressed in ridiculous store-bought and homemade costumes, Dean was still the criminal, or the Latin geek, or the slacker goof-off._

_It wasn't because of the classes and schoolwork that Dean didn't like high school—though he wasn't exactly fond of all the busywork and useless testing. He managed passing grades without trying very hard. Still, though, that wasn't why Dean always remembered high school with a sense of repulsion. It was just a fact that loners tended not to like high school. Where everyone was walking around with their cliques, prejudging and categorizing and gossiping, there was simply no room for the loner. He was cast out, stared at, and then forgotten._

_Sam thought Dean had been worshipped in high school as the typical popular guy who was always cracking jokes, making everyone laugh, and passing his classes without a modicum of effort. It was cool not to like school, which was why Sam had never been popular—though he had always had friends. But Sam hadn't really been very clued into Dean's high school experience, anyway._

_Halloween was always a reminder of where he stood, in his leather jacket and ripped-up jeans and thrift store sneakers, against the vicious masses of merciless high school teenagers. And yet it was a holiday so loved by normal teenagers, and it was the one day a year when his world and the 'normal' world seemed to mix. Dean wanted to like it. Felt he _should_ like it. It was the kind of normal he could fit into._

_Dean never told Sam why he hated high school so much. He also never told Sam that he actually hated Halloween just as much as Sam did. But Dean was a good liar, and he figured it wasn't any of Sam's business, anyway._

* * *

Dean's hand was starting to cramp up, and his entire palm was covered in a fine white powder from the chalk. He'd written 'I will not lie' about fifty times already, so he only had… about a bazillion minus fifty left to go, give or take.

"So being a liar makes me a bad student?" he asked as he wrote.

Miss Carver came up just behind him; her breath was cold on the back of his neck. She held all the intimidation and domination of the most ruthless, power-hungry teachers out to snatch bad kids up and make them suffer.

"Being a liar makes you a bad person. Being a bad person makes you a bad student. You are a bad student for many reasons, Dean, but right now I see a dirty, rotten liar standing in front of me, needing to learn his lesson. Keep going."

He wrote 'I will not lie' again, wondering where the hell Sam was and why he hadn't busted into the room yet.

He could feel Miss Carver grinning behind him.

"You're scared of Hell, aren't you, Dean?"

He felt his stomach bottom out.

"But you're a liar. You tell nothing but untruths. You say you're ready to die, but you lie. You are terrified. And you will die, terrified, alone, and you will go to Hell because you are a sinner." He could hear the glower in her cold voice. "You make deals with devils. You kill. You are a bad person, Dean." He felt her step back. She brought the wooden stick down faster than he could register, and it cracked sharply against his right forearm, jerking it down from the sting and dragging a jagged line down from the 'n' he was writing with the chalk. He hissed, felt an angry welt rising under his shirt.

"You must be taught a lesson," she continued, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up from static electricity that once again flowed through the air, forcing his arm back into place so that he could continue writing. "Because if you don't learn, you will be punished."

He glanced over his shoulder to find that her wooden pointer was leaning against the closest desk, and that she now held in her hand a gleaming butcher's knife. The children sat behind her, watching him through empty, gouged-out sockets.

_Come on, Sam_, he thought as he went back to writing.

* * *

Sam flipped his phone shut. Straight to voicemail. Whatever dimension Dean had slipped into, apparently there was no cell coverage there.

"Okay, Audrey, tell me everything you've ever heard about Miss Carver," he ordered. "And quickly."

"Everything I know, you've probably heard," she said in a rush. "Uh… she killed her students. Well, maybe left one alive, I think. Disappeared afterwards. Was—was kind of a freak, never left the school, people say she probably lived there."

"Where?" Sam demanded, aware that he was not helping the frightened girl at all but not caring. Dean was trapped with a homicidal ghost and would die before his year was up if Sam didn't find the body. "Where would she live in a little one-room schoolhouse?"

"I don't know!" Audrey cried out. "The—the secret cellar?"

Sam's feet felt glued to the hallway. He was aware that Marty and Linda were standing near them, listening to their conversation. He was aware that loud voices were still issuing from the auditorium—he hoped that somebody was taking down the body and they weren't killing each other in there. He was aware that Audrey, this young high school student with dark red hair and a black costume dress and stage makeup coating her face, looked as though she were drowning after everything that had happened. He just couldn't bring himself to care.

"Cellar?" he repeated, hope blooming for the first time since they'd gotten to Fair Hill.

Audrey nodded eagerly like a student excited to have the right answer. "Supposedly there was a secret cellar in the schoolhouse, but nobody's ever found it."

Sudden shouting from the auditorium. A dispute. It sounded as though factions were forming, arguing about what to do. Sam couldn't worry about them at the moment; he had too many other things jamming up his brain right now.

"Did somebody just say that someone in there is dead?" Marty cut in, head cocked like a dog listening to an inhumanly high whistle as he tried to discern what the voices in the auditorium were saying. "I thought I heard… nobody's going to tell us what's going on, are they?"

Sam ignored him. "If there was a hidden cellar… who would know how to find it? Who goes in the main basement here?"

Linda raised her hand. "The basement's not very big; it's just used for storage. Extra desks and stuff we can't fit in the rooms, old equipment. The janitors are in charge of storage. Which you should know already," she pointed out, nodding at him.

"Huh?" He frowned and glanced down at his gray uniform. "Oh. Right. Yeah, I don't actually work here."

Marty rolled his eyes, clearly exasperated with the woman. "Are you in the habit of letting strange men who pretend to work here wander the halls unattended?" he snapped, clearly losing his cool.

Shifting her weight to her other foot, looking somewhat abashed, Linda muttered, "I need a drink."

"I knew it," Marty gloated.

"Shut up," Sam snapped. "Linda, do you have a list of the phone numbers of everyone who works here?"

She nodded.

The excitement that came with solving a difficult case washed over Sam like a cool tidal wave. "Good. I know who we need to call."

* * *

Dean's hand slipped, and he dropped the chalk. He wiped away some of the powder on his jeans, one of his few pairs that wasn't already stained, before bending down to pick up the chalk. It had become a little nub, having already broken in half, and was hardly big enough to continue using.

It was better than getting his face carved up like a jack-o-lantern, which he was certain would happen if he stopped writing, but it was punishment all the same. His arm was getting tired, and it seemed less and less likely that Sam was going to show up any time soon, which made him start to worry about how long he would have to keep this up before he simply couldn't continue, resulting in him surely getting butchered for not having "learned his lesson." Of course, if his endurance surpassed his expectations, maybe Miss Carver would eventually just get bored and kill him anyway. She didn't seem the type to let him stop and tell him that he was educated, a good student, and could go home with all of his face.

"So all students are bad students? That's what this is all about? You're teaching us that even the good ones aren't really good?" he asked, hoping to at least get some information out of her if he was to be subjected to writing lines on a blackboard that had shrunk to its original side but that wiped itself clean every so often, meaning he would never be finished.

"There are no good students," she repeated from behind him. "Robbie Burns. I thought he was a good student." It unnerved him to have his back exposed to her, but he wasn't armed anyway, so even if he could have seen her it wouldn't have done him much good. "It was only later that I came to my senses and realized that he was not a good student. Not at all."

Dean's handwriting was getting even sloppier than usual. He momentarily paused to flex his hand, clenching and stretching his fingers before continuing his lines. "What happened?"

He chanced a glance backward, which revealed Miss Carver standing several feet behind him, a murderous glare on her face, the children sitting behind her in their seats, quiet and still. Revenge and murder danced in her dark, beady eyes.

"I let him live."

Realization dawned on Dean as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

He paused, the chalk squeaking against the blackboard as he dragged it to a halt before finishing Miss Carver's sentence.

"And then he killed you."


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: Thank you all SO MUCH for sticking with this fic. It sort of took on a life of its own, and I'm forever excited to find that people enjoyed reading it. All your kind words really make me so happy. Winchester13, I'm so glad you like my writing and think everyone's in character! Irismay, I'm thrilled that you think Miss Carver is scary; I was worried she ended up too much like a boring, monologuing villain. Nana56 and ROBINV, thank you two for always consistently providing your opinions and lovely feedback; you're great readers and I love reading what you have to say. And thank you X infinity to everyone who stopped by to drop a review. Anyway, I'm sad to say this fic has come to an end, and I hope that you all enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it!_

* * *

Ring.

_Come on, Ron, answer your damn phone!_

Sam sat at the computer in the main office, staring at the information he'd highlighted for Ron, the phone number he'd punched into his cell phone.

Riiiiing.

Impatience mounted in his chest.

Riii—"Hello?"

Relief.

"Hi, Ron."

"Who's this?"

"This is…" Sam glanced at the three people hovering over him. "Uh, this is the guy who took over your job for the week."

"Oh. Hey, I'm not gonna get canned when I come back to work, right?"

Sam sighed. "No, you're good. Listen, do you know if there's a… a hidden part of the basement, maybe not easily accessible; it would be somewhere in the middle of the school, uh…"

"That freaky old cellar?"

"Yes!" Sam shouted into the phone before composing himself. "Yeah. Can you tell me about it?"

"Sure. Few weeks ago I'm trying to make more space for all that damn crap the school keeps down there, you know? And I'm trying to shove these stacked desks against the wall when they fall over each other and break right through the damn flimsy wall. And on the other side I found this nasty little room, looked like it'd been shut up for a while. Looked like somebody _lived_ down there once, you know? There was a bed and one of those, whatchamacallits, wardrobe things too. So, I needed the extra space, so I moved some of the desks in there and hauled out a big thing filled with books, two big bags of salt, and some real rotten old meat that smelled like horseshit."

Sam's brain got stuck on one important word throughout this explanation. "Salt?"

"Yeah," Ron replied as though Sam were an idiot for not understanding. "Back in the olden days they used salt to preserve their meat. Common knowledge, buddy. I may be a janitor, but I'm not stupid."

Sam could not stifle the surprised snort that escaped him. "Thanks, Ron," he breathed before hanging up the phone. "That makes sense. She's been quiet all these years because she's been surrounded by big bags of salt that she was using to preserve her meat. Then a few weeks ago, Ron moved the salt, she was released, and she started killing," he explained, blinking and realizing that Dean was not here, and that the people to whom he was speaking were all giving him utterly baffled looks. He shook his head. "She's in the cellar. I've got to go salt and burn her body, and this should be over—" Sam stopped halfway through standing up as he patted his pockets. Crap. "I left the supplies in the car. In the parking lot. And we're locked in."

Audrey, Linda, and Marty were all watching him as though waiting for him to come up with a plan. He admired their ability to continue trying to help even though he hadn't really bothered to explain anything. That was one thing about working with his dad that Sam had never been able to handle.

"Okay," he continued. "We need to improvise. Know anywhere we can find salt?"

Marty came up with the answer: "Cafeteria?"

"Good. Matches?"

Silence. Audrey bit her lip before suggesting, "Chem lab."

"Okay. Marty, Linda—go to the cafeteria, find as much salt as you can carry. Audrey, show me where the science department is."

The girl nodded and stopped him from barging out of the office for a moment, squirming out of her long dress and dropping it in a heap of cloth on the floor. Sam, having been startled by the sudden stripping, was glad to see that she was wearing shorts and a tank top under her costume.

With a nod at him, Audrey led the way at a brisk pace, down the hall, to the main staircase, up to the third floor. Sam was humming with anxiety, and he cast a few looks at Audrey's blank face as they walked.

"Are your parents back in the auditorium? Will they be wondering where you are?" He asked, the thought coming to him suddenly as an image of all the frightened audience members struck his inner eye.

Audrey shook her head and pursed her lips. "They're not interested in theater." Sam didn't press the issue, and after a moment she changed the subject. "So this'll kill her? Well, she's already dead, but…" Audrey shrugged.

"Yeah. It'll send away her spirit, permanently. I wish I didn't have to tell you that ghosts are real, but it's kind of late for that, I think," he replied.

"Well, if it's a choice between 'there's an afterlife' and 'I'm clinically insane,' I guess I don't mind the first one being the winner. Right around here, all these rooms should have matches." She stopped him and motioned to the L-shaped hall, and when Sam peered inside the classrooms he saw large black tables ideal for experiments, the kind of tables he remembered having in high school and college.

He stepped inside and immediately made for the teacher's desk, rummaging around until he found a pile of matchbooks. Audrey had gone into another room, and as they both re-entered the hallway, Sam saw that they had enough matches to burn down the entire school. Not that Sam would ever do something like that.

Hurrying back to the main office, they found Linda and Marty already waiting with pocketfuls of salt shakers and little white paper packets.

"Perfect," Sam said once they had all converged. "Okay, now we—" He cut himself off, horror dawning as he remembered what he was still missing. "Lighter fluid."

The three of them shrugged and glanced around. Of course there was no lighter fluid in the school.

"Okay," Sam mumbled again, trying not to panic, knowing that every second they wasted brought Dean closer to getting his face carved up like a Christmas turkey, if it wasn't already. "Okay, what else is flammable? If it's dry enough down there, she'll catch anyway, but it's probably not, we need insurance, we need something… flammable…"

Everyone was silent. Then Linda, looking unsure, asked timidly, "Is vodka flammable?"

Marty raised his eyebrows at her incredulously.

"I'm not supposed to… but I have some in my desk drawer."

Sam couldn't stop himself from grabbing either side of Linda's face and giving her a quick kiss on the mouth. "You are a genius."

Linda, who had probably never been called a genius in her life, looked pleased.

* * *

Dean swallowed dryly as the blackboard wiped itself clean again and a spasm went through his fingers. Trying to distract her from his inability to keep writing, he talked.

"So Robbie, your one good student, killed you? And then, freaking out, not wanting his parents to find out what he'd done, he hid your body and stopped talking."

"There are no good students." While Miss Carver's voice was still calm, there was a furious note of malice, of pure viciousness, when she spoke. "All students are bad students. Even the ones who seem good. Audrey. Sam. You. Everyone needs to be taught a lesson. Have you learned yours yet?"

Dean was busy trying to write 'lie' when the chalk slipped again and clattered to the floor, rolling slightly, sounding like a death knell. He didn't bend down to pick it up.

"It doesn't matter. You'll kill me anyway, you psychotic bitch," he spat, turning around to face her.

Miss Carver's lips curled up in a sneer. "The classroom is no place for swearing. Nasty tongues ought to be cut out."

And then that same high wind, that same force that had the power of a demon's telekinesis, shoved Dean so hard that he slid and stumbled over to the desks where the children were waiting. He tried to resist, but it pushed him closer, and he watched as the loose rope tied around their necks and snaking up into the ceiling tightened, pulling them slowly out of their seats, lifting them into the air. They made no reaction, did not move, did not resist. The rope lifted them up until they were hanging with their feet dangling in the air five feet above their desks.

The wind pushed Dean into the nearest desk, jarring his thigh into the edge, and he swung around and found himself seated; and then that mysterious rope that held the dead children twisted around his feet and tied his hands behind the chair, locking him in place.

Miss Carver strolled over to him as the wind died down, lifting her wooden pointer.

"I told you I would let you go when you learned to be a good student," she told him quietly, cracking the wooden stick down on the old-fashioned desk before pointing it at his face.

Dean tugged fruitlessly at his bonds and grimaced up at her. "I thought you said there were no good students."

Miss Carver smiled.

The wooden pointer in her hand had become a knife.

* * *

They crashed down the stairs and into the basement, leaving behind the main hallway into which people from the auditorium had begun to trickle, arguing and running around and causing a general commotion. Sam had thought about trying to calm all of them down and stop the panic, but he was a bit preoccupied at the moment.

The school basement was dark and dirty, dust gathering in the corners, old desks piled up amid bookcases that had nowhere to go. It was like a graveyard for forgotten school supplies.

He started off through the room, scanning the walls for the break Ron had mentioned, his three lackeys doing the same behind him. He wasn't sure whether they realized in a conscious way that they were looking for a corpse that had been busy decomposing for over a hundred years, but he figured he would climb that mountain when he came to it. They were surprisingly calm and eager to help, and he didn't want to spoil that by worrying them needlessly.

He snorted disbelievingly. Maybe that's why Dad had always been so secretive.

No time to dwell on that, though. The past was the past, and the only chance that he had at saving Dean and ensuring their future was to find the body and burn it into dust.

"I think I found it!" Audrey's voice echoed through the basement, and Sam was immediately rushing to her side, seeing the split boards in the wall and the large opening that they created. Ignoring the splintered wood around the sharp edges, he ducked inside and found himself in another time entirely.

It was a small room, just as Ron had described it. The bed was plain and adorned with a tattered blanket that was covered in dust and spider-webs; there was an old-fashioned wooden wardrobe whose door was cracked slightly open, revealing dull brown dresses of a traditional nature. The floor was bare, and the wood looked rotted through in places. It was damp and cool down here.

Sam kicked at some of the rotten floorboards, but there was nothing but dirt underneath. "Okay," he muttered to himself, scanning, searching. She was here somewhere. She _had_ to be.

Suddenly, the four of them were not alone in the room.

Six children were hanging from the ceiling, their eyes cut away, their mouths too-large and bloody, six jack-o-lanterns and jill-o-lanterns with nooses around their necks.

Linda screamed and stumbled back into Marty, who almost lost his footing on the precarious, old floorboards. Audrey squeezed her eyes shut.

Sam ignored the ghosts. "It's just a distraction!" he shouted, searching wildly for a hiding place, feeling as though time were slipping away like water through his hands.

He took a step forward, footsteps sounding hollow here, breathing hard, and he nearly dry-heaved at the foul stench that forced its way into his nostrils. It gave him a visual of green, putrid meat crawling with maggots. He looked down. Near his feet were a few stray grains of salt. This was where the bags had been.

And, he realized, the bags had been on top of something. Hiding something.

A brass handle stuck up near the foot of the bed, and Sam realized what he was standing on.

A trapdoor.

He immediately dropped to his hands and knees, grabbing the handle and pulling. The wooden floor creaked and groaned, and then the square door swung up and open, revealing a small, dark pit with an even worse smell emanating from its depths.

"Gotcha!" Sam spat victoriously, glancing up for the supplies. Linda was chugging from the bottle of vodka, glazed eyes locked on the still, dead, hanging children.

Sam rolled his eyes and snatched it out of her hands.

* * *

Dean tried not to show the fear in his face, but he figured Miss Carver would see it anyway. And then she would probably chide him for being a liar.

"Stop pretending to be brave, Dean," she told him. "Where you're going, that won't do you any good."

He didn't want to think about that. Hell was probably something like an eternity in high school. But he couldn't think about it. If he did, he thought he'd crack. And he couldn't crack. Especially not when Sammy was around.

"You'll go to Hell, Dean. You'll burn for your sins." She brought the knife up, inspecting its gleaming blade. It looked sharp. Dean tried to twist away as she angled it towards his mouth.

"Yeah, and when my brother finds your body, he'll send _you_ straight to Hell where you belong, no matter how many Bible verses you quote at me," he spat savagely, craning his head back as far as it would go to avoid the knife.

Miss Carver only smiled at him. "Then I'll see you there."

She placed the knife in his mouth. It was cold on his tongue. The blade dug into the right corner of his lips. Applying a little pressure, Miss Carver began to saw, and Dean's cheek exploded in pain as the knife sliced up, forcing his mouth into a smile, blood dripping down his chin, Miss Carver cackling in his ears in time to the pounding of his heart.

* * *

Her body was crumpled at the bottom of the pit, limbs lying haphazardly where they'd landed 118 years ago. Her clothing was nothing but unraveling threads, her flesh eaten away to bone. What little light there was shining down into the black pit showed her face. It was a skull, her eyes two empty sockets, her nose a dark crater, her teeth and jaw bare of lips. Sam thought it was fitting.

He hastily unscrewed the caps of two salt shakers and let a waterfall of white crystals empty into the pit, covering the skeleton. As he worked, he tried to breathe through his mouth, a technique Dean had taught him, but the odor of death seemed to invade his taste buds, and he gagged a couple of times.

Turning over the bottle, he watched as the clear vodka cascaded down on top of the salt, splashing through the darkness, and after putting aside the still half-filled glass bottle, he pulled out a book of matches, snatched one out, and struck it against the side.

It was a dud. He tried the next one, which snapped into life as a small flame popped up on the end, glowing brightly orange. Without hesitation, he tossed it into the pit, and the alcohol burst into flames, which danced on the corpse and ripped through the air with blinding, electrifying light.

Heart pounding, Sam fumbled shakily with his cell phone, saw with relief that there was still service down here, and called Dean.

Straight to voicemail.

"No," he murmured. "Something else is binding her here." He looked around, noting dimly that the students were still hanging from the ceiling. "This room. This entire room is grounding her." Audrey stepped out of the way as he threw himself to his feet, snatched up the bottle of vodka, and whipped it around, splashing the entire room with alcohol.

"What are you doing?" Marty cried out as the flames raged in the pit beside him, sweat beading on his brow.

"Burning what's left of the schoolhouse."

Sam lit another match, tipped his head in the direction of the opening that led back out into the basement, and waited until all three had scurried through before throwing the match onto the bed.

The room exploded in golden fire, which quickly ate through the wood and the dusty sheets and the ancient wardrobe.

The ghostly children shimmered as air does in extreme heat, as though they were nothing more than a mirage, and dissolved.

Sam ducked through the opening, the heat of the flames slicking his skin with sweat, smoke starting to pour through the hole in the wall.

They stood in the dark basement looking at one another. Linda and Marty looked shell-shocked, Linda's hands clutching Marty's arm for dear life. Audrey was staring at the dancing flames through the hole in the wall, mouth hanging open, dazed.

"We just burned down a school," she noted with awe.

"Technically it was a cellar," Sam corrected absentmindedly as he flipped through his address book again and pressed for Dean, placing the phone against his ear, pulse pounding in his head, listening to the phone ring.

* * *

Dean squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that prickled his eyes and leaked out at the corners, the sharp, stinging pain in his cheek almost unbearable as she sliced through the thick tissue there. His mouth tasted coppery, and for the first time he thought that Sam was not coming. Sam was going to let him die here, too early; his deal wasn't yet due, but he was going to die anyway, and Hell would be waiting for him on the other side, and Dean didn't think he'd ever before felt the sheer terror that this knowledge instilled in him.

Soon she would turn the knife and start coming back down around his lips, hacking them away to reveal his bloodied teeth, giving his jaw the look of a skull.

Then she would cut out his tongue.

Then she would saw at his nose, digging around the cartilage until it came off.

Then she would slide the knife against his eyes, and they would pop out of their sockets, and the world would go dark.

Then that rope tying his hands and feet would slither around his neck and tighten into a noose, pulling him up slowly from his chair as he struggled, blind, twisted by pain, and he would slowly suffocate.

But none of this, of course, really happened.

The cut from his lips to his cheek was about half an inch long, and it would get no longer, for the knife suddenly dropped from his mouth and fell to the floor with a clatter.

Cheek burning, Dean blinked open his watery eyes and gazed blurrily around the room.

Miss Carver was dissolving before his eyes, her figure oozing and flickering. She released a furious, snarling scream, teeth bared, fury etched in her eyes.

_It's time you learned _your_ lesson, Miss Carver_, Dean wanted to say. _Killing people makes you a bad person._

The lamps whooshed out, and the children that were still dangling above Dean's head were released, their ropes having been cut or untied, and they floated down to the floor as the chalk picked itself up at the front of the board and wrote, GO TO HELL, MISS CARVER in large, childish handwriting.

And then she was gone.

The children disappeared, too.

Dean blinked.

The room looked just as it had when he'd first found Audrey there: new plastic desks, a projector at the front of the room, a clean blackboard and a dry erase board on one wall, a flat ceiling with rectangular fluorescent lights. He brought his hands around to his front, the rope gone, and he gingerly felt his cheek, fingers coming away red.

He was alone.

And then his phone was ringing. He flipped it open and pressed it against the uninjured side of his face.

"Cuttin' it a little close there, Sammy."

"Dean, thank god," came the voice at the other end. "You okay?"

Dean felt his broken cheek with his tongue and swallowed. So, he was alive. He wasn't in Hell yet. Still, it loomed in the background of his thoughts, Miss Carver's taunting voice echoing in his ears.

But Dean was a good liar. "Yeah."

* * *

The doors were open.

Frightened, confused, anxious, and excited people burst into the clear, cool night, the full moon washing a white glow over their relieved faces as they surged through the parking lot, into their cars, and drove off down the street. The flashing lights on the police cars lit red on the school, along with the fire truck that had just arrived to tend to the freak fire that had mysteriously broken out in the basement. Police officers stood around questioning the baffled people who remained, leaving the policemen just as bewildered about what, exactly had happened.

The parents of Messenger #3 were still in the auditorium, crying, shouting—angry and despairing. The students in the play were still hanging around in their costumes, faces covered in makeup and surprise, watching as a police officer cut down the body and placed a jacket over the mutilated face.

Mr. Lindaugh was pale, seated in a chair in the auditorium, staring at the empty stage and the bit of rope still hanging from the stage lights.

Audrey watched the disorder with a sense of detachment. Her reality, after all, had been severely altered these past few days. She stood around the corner, in a hallway just off the main one, with Linda, Marty, the not-really-a-custodian, and the not-really-Mr.-Robinson, who was currently pressing a rag to his bleeding cheek.

"Uh…" Said Not-really-a-custodian, whose name she thought was Sam. He peered around the corner, eyeing the cops. "Listen, thanks for everything, guys, but we've got to get out of here."

"Certainly." Marty stepped forward and shook each of their hands, once again composed. "So the… problem… is over?" Not-Mr- Robinson, whose name Audrey had discovered was Dean, nodded. "Well, that's good. I suppose if this is the kind of thing that happens here, I'm glad you took my job."

Dean, whose voice was muffled from the rag pressed up against the side of his lips, replied, "Well, if Mrs. What's-her-face is still out with the broken leg, the job's all yours." His eyes flickered to Audrey, a grin curling up the visible side of his face. "Go easy on him, okay?"

She thought maybe he didn't hate her as much as she'd assumed he did, and that lifted her spirits significantly.

"Take care, Paul," Marty said as they turned to leave, and Dean's eyes twinkled as he pressed the rag more firmly against his cheek and started whistling _Mrs. Robinson_ by Simon & Garfunkel, and Marty's mouth dropped open as if in realization, and he huffed out a laugh.

"Wait," Linda spoke up as Sam and Dean walked quickly down the hallway in the opposite direction of the auditorium and the resulting commotion. "Did we just kill a _ghost?_"

Audrey rolled her eyes. Marty was staring at Linda with an expression of pity, amusement, confusion, and affection. "Why don't I go buy you a drink."

Linda nodded fervently, said something about getting her purse, and hurried down to the main office. Audrey stared wonderingly after her before returning her gaze to Marty, appraising, sizing him up. His neatly-combed brown hair was tousled, his dress pants rumpled, his sky blue tie askew, sweat stains marring the underarms of his white collared shirt. At last she asked dubiously, "_You_ were supposed to be my sub this week?"

"That's right," he replied in a cool, confident tone.

Audrey snorted. "I'm kind of glad the school was haunted. Class with you wouldn't have been nearly as fun."

Turning away from Marty's affronted expression with a smug grin, Audrey sauntered off in the direction of the auditorium. She wasn't insane, but she'd certainly _thought_ she was multiple times; she could use that to flesh out Lady Macbeth's character. Like Lady Macbeth, she was ambitious, but she wasn't perfect. And as long as she wasn't _actually_ insane, she figured she could live with that.

Yes, tomorrow's performance would go better.

* * *

"_If they were in Hell, how could they hear her chanting?"_

"_They must have superhearing!"_

Dean chuckled, and Sam gave the TV the same look he'd been giving it for the last half-hour: openmouthed, disdainful incredulity. They were each sprawled on their separate beds, a giant bowl of half-eaten popcorn sitting at the end of Dean's, pieces of popcorn strewn over both beds and the floor.

"Honestly," Sam commented, never tearing his eyes away from the train wreck on the television. "I said we should spend Halloween sitting around eating popcorn and watching movies. And you go out and rent _Hell Hazers 2_."

Dean grabbed a handful of popcorn, spilling some into his lap as he shoved it into his mouth and chewed. "Happy Halloween," he said through a mouthful of half-chewed food, which finally made Sam look away from the screen and frown at his brother.

"Don't stuff so much in your mouth. You'll rip out your stitches."

Dean put a finger to the right corner of his lips, feeling the stitches and the cut. Sam had done a nice job. They'd come out soon, and he probably wouldn't even have a scar. He shrugged and shoved another handful of popcorn into his mouth.

Sam sighed. "It's a miracle you managed to listen to a teacher long enough to not get yourself killed."

"I have a whole new respect for teachers," Dean replied after swallowing, grabbing his beer from the bedside table and taking a swig to wash out the shells stuck between his teeth. "Well—good ones, at least, which I never had. I don't know, I didn't see a whole lotta difference between Miss Carver and every teacher I ever had in high school."

"That's because you were a troublemaker, Dean. All your teachers hated you."

Dean shook his head with a grin. Not _all_ of his teachers had hated him. A few had even been quite fond of him. But he allowed Sam his misguided opinion, glad that he wouldn't have to deal with teachers or high school again anytime soon.

Every so often, a trick-or-treater would run past outside the window, dressed as a ghost, a vampire, a zombie. Tonight was the night that monsters ran amok, where the world of the supernatural got tangled up with the world of normal people. It was a day for parties and horror movies, a day Dean wanted to like.

His mind drifted back to watching monsters outside windows, to zombies in the woods, to kids playing pranks and pretending to be ghosts. And then to crazy, dead teachers fashioning jack-o-lanterns out of faces, and this was just one more thing to put on the list of Why Halloween Sucks.

But then again, Dean wouldn't have to deal with anymore screwed up Halloweens anymore. This time next year, he'd be in Hell with Miss Carver.

He pushed the daunting, heavy thought away even as a little voice told him that he could lie to Sam, but he couldn't lie to himself: he was scared of Hell. It crept around the corners of his mind as time slipped away like sand through the hourglass. He was scared all the time.

Instead, Dean decided to voice a different truth: "This," he announced, gesturing generally at what they were doing, "is nice and all, but I'm not gonna lie, Sam. I _hate_ Halloween."

"Amen to that." Sam took a drink from his beer, raising his eyebrows at the terrible CGI on the TV. "I'm glad this job is over. Hell, I'm just glad to be out of that damn janitor costume."

Dean rolled his eyes. "_Custodian_, Sam. Jeez."

Sam grabbed a handful of popcorn and threw it at Dean.

THE END


End file.
